Article by Cosima Lenz, Stefaan Verhulst, and Roshni Singh: “Women’s health has long been constrained not simply by a lack of research or investment, but by the absence of a clear, collectively defined set of priorities. Across the field, the most urgent questions – those that reflect women’s lived experiences, diverse needs and evolving health challenges – are too often unidentified, under-articulated or overshadowed by legacy agendas. Consequently, decision-makers struggle to allocate resources effectively, researchers work without a shared compass and innovation efforts risk overlooking the areas of greatest impact.
That’s why identifying and prioritising the questions that matter is essential. Questions shape what gets studied, what gets measured and whose needs are addressed. Yet historically, these questions have been selected in fragmented or opaque ways, driven by the interests of a limited set of stakeholders. This has left major evidence gaps, particularly in areas that disproportionately affect women, and has perpetuated inconsistencies in diagnosis, treatment and care…
The GovLab’s 100 Questions Initiative is such a global, multi-phase process that seeks to collectively identify and prioritise the ten most consequential questions in a given field. In partnership with CEPS, and with support from the Gates-funded Research & Innovation (R&I) project, this methodology was applied to women’s health innovation to define the Top 10 Questions guiding future research and innovation.
The process combined topic mapping with experts across research, policy, technology and advocacy, followed by collecting and refining candidate questions to address gaps in evidence, practice and lived experience. More than 70 global domain and data experts contributed, followed by a public voting phase that prioritised questions seen as both urgent and actionable. The full methodology is detailed in a pre-publication report on SSRN.
The Top 10 Questions are diagnostic tools, revealing evidence gaps, system failures and persistent assumptions shaping women’s health. By asking better questions, the initiative creates the conditions for more relevant research and improved outcomes…(More)”.
