As girls’s well being funding continues to bloom, autoimmune and inflammatory ailments (AIIDs) are an under-recognized alternative. Regardless of an astonishing 75% of autoimmune sufferers being feminine, AIIDs will not be included beneath the extensive umbrella of girls’s well being. Even giant healthcare methods have largely ignored AIIDs, particularly in girls. AIIDs are a big, but under-acknowledged driver of prices and affected person struggling. For all these causes, AIIDs ought to be a main goal for girls’s well being buyers and startups.
Ladies’s well being is extra than simply sexual, reproductive, and emotional well being. It consists of all circumstances that disproportionately or in another way have an effect on girls. Autoimmune ailments match each these standards. Given the present funding concentrate on girls’s well being, AIIDs are an apparent, but ignored goal. By addressing a significant well being concern affecting 35 million girls within the US alone1, we are able to enhance the livelihood of girls whereas addressing widespread co-morbidities.
Growing Curiosity in Ladies’s Well being
The difficulty of girls’s well being has grown more and more seen. Globally there are drivers equivalent to lacking analysis, lack of knowledge, and lack of intercourse and gender-specific care supply methods. These have resulted in well being disparities generally known as the world girls’s well being hole.
Ladies bear the heavy burden of their very own well being, at the price of their very own livelihoods and dealing talents. A lot of the well being burden falls on girls which are of working age. Apparently, there has traditionally been an underrepresentation of this inhabitants. This can be because of the truth that working age coincides with childbearing age.
Persistent Situations
Persistent circumstances are a big and rising part of girls’s well being burden. They impede girls’s high quality of life and critically have an effect on their capacity to work. Many power circumstances have an effect on girls disproportionately, together with headache problems, temper problems, osteoporosis, dementia, fibromyalgia, and myalgic encephalitis/power fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). The Nationwide Ladies’s Well being Community highlights 5 particularly, three of that are or could also be autoimmune ailments: rheumatoid arthritis (RA), lupus, and ME/CFS.
There 35 million girls within the US alone scuffling with autoimmune illness. Thus, we are able to assume that they’re a big contributor to the worldwide girls’s well being burden. Importantly, AIIDs, whereas sometimes affecting youngsters, are likely to emerge at puberty and are additional impacted by being pregnant and menopause. Which means that amongst different power circumstances, AIIDs affect girls of working age to rather more impact.
Regardless of this, there’s a lack of knowledge on incidence and prevalence of AIIDs. Moreover, autoimmune trials traditionally don’t concentrate on simply girls. Extra regarding, AIIDs are underfunded within the healthcare and digital well being funding sectors and have but to be addressed within the shortly rising FemTech market panorama. In reality, AIIDs are normally strikingly absent from conversations about girls’s well being altogether!
Actionable Interventions for Addressing AIIDs in Ladies’s Well being
Analysis and Scientific Knowledge
To begin, there’s a sturdy want for brand new analysis fashions to raised perceive girls’s ailments and circumstances. Present girls’s well being analysis focus is on sexual and reproductive well being, acute ailments, and lethal ailments. Analysis is way much less targeted on power circumstances, regardless that they could result in life-long incapacity or impaired high quality of life.
Moreover, a lot of the pre-existing epidemiological and scientific information used extensively in the present day fails to present a complete view. As an illustration, the Nationwide Well being and Vitamin Examination Survey (NHANES) has supplied prevalence information on power circumstances, ailments, and threat components in america because the 1960’s. Nevertheless, amongst autoimmune ailments, NHANES solely experiences on rheumatoid arthritis. There are some 80-100 named autoimmune ailments. Given the tens of thousands and thousands of girls already affected and growing prevalence, there’s a stark lack of knowledge.
Regardless of progress, most of the recognized analysis gaps stay. A 2024 pre-publication report from the Nationwide Academies means that the NIH and different related analysis businesses ought to help additional analysis into the organic and physiological pathways that affect power circumstances equivalent to autoimmune illness, together with hormones and intercourse chromosomes.
Present progress consists of the latest opening of the Workplace of Autoimmune Illness Analysis from the NIH Workplace of Analysis on Ladies’s Well being (ORWH). The workplace was opened so as to encourage extra analysis and innovation relating to the disproportionate results of autoimmune illness in girls.
The Position of Buyers
One other wanted intervention is investor consideration. This implies not solely directing extra funding in analysis and growth, but in addition in progressive care supply options. Lately, personal fairness and enterprise capital (VC) buyers have paid growing consideration to investing in girls’s well being, notably within the digital sector. But autoimmune illness continues to go unnoticed.
The McKinsey Well being Institute means that with correct funding in analysis, information, and care supply, addressing the ladies’s well being hole could possibly be equal to 137 million girls taking full-time positions by 2040, leading to a one trillion greenback progress within the world financial system. This report from McKinsey particulars extra.
Particularly, autoimmune ailments supply a beautiful alternative for funding. As beforehand talked about, autoimmune illness impacts 35 million girls within the US alone. We’ve supplied proof that autoimmune ailments are simply as a lot of a girls’s well being situation as different circumstances already included in FemTech. On the planet of girls’s well being funding, autoimmune ailments are an untapped alternative.
Importantly, girls with autoimmune illness are a goal market keen to learn from addressing advanced affected person journeys, brought on by a mixture of siloed specialties and poor care coordination. Such enhancements in care coordination and supply will profit not solely girls with autoimmune ailments, however the rising inhabitants of sufferers with power illness general.
Unmet Wants are Open Alternatives
Ladies with AIIDs comprise a inhabitants of 35 million within the US alone, but their market alternative continues to go unnoticed. Given the present lack of autoimmune-focused options, investments and startups are welcomed and inspired. Addressing the problem of siloed specialties, creating new improvements, and coordinating care amongst suppliers might all be enabled by digital applied sciences. Treating AIIDs as a important funding goal means advancing well being outcomes for a lot of extra girls, with potential for wider improved well being outcomes.
Take a look at our third and last a part of this publish, the place we additional focus on the evolving FemTech business panorama and the place AIIDs might discover their slot in.
Authors: DrBonnie360, Ellen M. Martin, & Sydney Hahn
We strategy these thought management posts from our multi-lens views.
- DrBonnie360: Digital well being guide, scientific dentist, Wall Road analyst, affected person & advocate.
- Ellen M. Martin: Advisor, editor, life science finance/IR/marcomm, autoimmune caretaker.
- Sydney Hahn: Digital well being fairness analysis intern, Human Biology & Society and Mathematical Biology Undergraduate Scholar at UCLA.
Strategic Consulting & Skilled Companies
We offer skilled consulting companies to funding, rising, and established firms. Our work bridges silos and fills gaps to assist our purchasers enhance look after AIID sufferers and cut back prices. Knowledgeable by affected person and caretaker views, we urge buyers & purchasers to combine one of the best of digital, standard, and practical medication into AIID care supply.
- We assist our purchasers leverage digital improvements into V1C for AIID sufferers.
- Our material experience consists of: oral well being, microbiome, autoimmune affected person journeys, aggressive panorama evaluation, strategic positioning & messaging, digital well being, and self-hacking.
- We now have a long time of expertise in finance, advertising and marketing, and communications for dozens of healthcare and life sciences organizations, rising and established.
- Our backgrounds embody scientific dentistry, osteology, biotech IR/PR, marcomm, content material creation, strategic consulting, and autoimmune advocacy.
Contact us that can assist you map your market panorama and higher perceive sufferers’ unmet wants. Additionally, we may help you make clear and articulate your organization’s market place and differentiators. Lengthy earlier than COVID-19, we have been facilitating digital periods. We additionally create compelling content material: articles, weblog posts, collateral, e-books, net copy, and white papers. Our Autoimmune Join/DrBonnie360 web site showcases our personal content material.