Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many women's health hubs have been established; and in which integrated care board areas they are located.

The Department has invested £25 million over 2023/24 and 2024/25 to support the establishment of at least one pilot women’s health hub in every integrated care system. The 2024/25 NHS priorities and operational planning guidance asks integrated care boards (ICBs) to establish and develop at least one women’s health hub in every ICB by December 2024, working in partnership with local authorities.

NHS England has asked the ICBs to report regularly on their progress implementing the funding. As of September 2024, 36 of the 42 ICBs had had reported to NHS England that their women’s health hub was open. Those ICBs are:

• NHS Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB;
• NHS Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB;
• NHS Birmingham and Solihull ICB;
• NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB;
• NHS Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB;
• NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB;
• NHS Cornwall and The Isles Of Scilly ICB;
• NHS Coventry and Warwickshire ICB;
• NHS Derby and Derbyshire ICB;
• NHS Devon ICB;
• NHS Frimley ICB;
• NHS Gloucestershire ICB;
• NHS Greater Manchester ICB;
• NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB;
• NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB;
• NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB;
• NHS Kent and Medway ICB;
• NHS Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB;
• NHS Lincolnshire ICB;
• NHS Mid and South Essex ICB;
• NHS Norfolk and Waveney ICB;
• NHS North Central London ICB;
• NHS North East and North Cumbria ICB;
• NHS North East London ICB;
• NHS North West London ICB;
• NHS Northamptonshire ICB;
• NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB;
• NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICB;
• NHS Somerset ICB.
• NHS South East London ICB;
• NHS South Yorkshire ICB;
• NHS Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB;
• NHS Suffolk and North East Essex ICB;
• NHS Surrey Heartlands ICB;
• NHS Sussex ICB; and
• NHS West Yorkshire ICB.

The Birmingham, RAND, and Cambridge Evaluation, published in September 2024, identified 17 women’s health hubs in England which were established between 2001 and 2022. The report is available at the following link:

https://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/hsdr/JYFT5036/#/abstract

The research notes the difficulty in locating models for women’s health hubs, meaning the research may not have captured all open women’s health hubs, in particular hubs that have opened more recently as locally-led initiatives.