Reframing Care: From Redistributing the Burden to Sharing Human Fulfillment-and Advancing Research Careers

9:55 AM - 10:05 AM JST(12:55 AM - 1:05 AM UTC)

[HbDz7mzy-02] Reframing Women’s Health: From Individual Burden to Societal Value

*Keiko Matsubara¹ (1. Chief, Discovery and Innovation Gateway, Integrated Center for Women’s Health, National Center for Child Health and Development, Japan (Japan))

Women's Health

Women's health is a complex field that evolves throughout the entire life course—from adolescence through pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, and into old age—where physical, psychological, and social factors are intricately intertwined. Traditionally, however, medical care, research, and social systems have tended to treat these issues in isolation, either by specific disease or by life stage. While individual challenges at each stage may be addressed, a consistent framework for support throughout the entire life course has yet to be fully established. As a result, health issues specific to women, such as dysmenorrhea, menopausal symptoms, and postpartum depression, are often dismissed as matters of "individual endurance" or "self-responsibility," leading to delayed medical consultation and insufficient support. Furthermore, the profound social and economic impacts—including a decline in labor productivity, career attrition, and reduced quality of life—have been historically undervalued, despite estimates placing the annual economic loss at approximately 3.4 trillion yen.
In response to these challenges, the Integrated Center for Women's Health (ICWH) was established in 2024. As Japan’s first national medical research hub to comprehensively address women’s health, the ICWH builds upon the extensive expertise in maternal and perinatal medicine cultivated by the National Center for Child Health and Development (NCCHD). The center aims to create a new medical model that bridges previously fragmented domains by integrally promoting basic and clinical research incorporating gender-specific medicine, expanding clinical functions, building data infrastructure, and providing information dissemination and policy recommendations.
The ICWH functions as a platform that unifies data infrastructure, research, clinical functions, policy collaboration, and social implementation. Through cross-sector partnerships between industry, academia, government, and the private sector, the center strives to bridge the gaps that exist between medical care and daily life. In this presentation, I will redefine women’s health from an "individual burden" to a "social value" and present a new framework that traverses care, research, and social implementation through our concrete initiatives.