Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that female-only medical conditions are included in medical training and research.

The General Medical Council (GMC) sets and enforces the standards that all doctors, Anaesthesia Associates, and Physician Associates must adhere to. The standard of training for doctors is the responsibility of the GMC, who set the outcome standards expected at undergraduate level. Individual medical schools set their own curricula, which must meet the standards and expected outcomes set by the GMC. The GMC has introduced the Medical Licensing Assessment for the majority of doctors, including all medical students graduating from the 2024/25 academic year and onwards. Within this assessment are a number of topics relating to women’s health, including fibroids, endometriosis, and urinary incontinence. This will encourage a better understanding of common health problems for women among all doctors as they start their careers in the United Kingdom.

The Department funds research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR expects to implement its sex and gender policy in spring 2025. Implementing such a policy will ensure that research accounts for sex and gender across every stage of the research cycle, thus facilitating both an assessment of the funding into topics that impact men and women and, crucially, a greater understanding of how women might be impacted differently.