women's health lab

The health of women has far-reaching impacts not just on the individual, but on their families, communities, and broader society. Studies show that healthier women contribute to more productive, well-educated societies, while the death of a mother can cause a significant decline in the health, nutrition, and economic well-being of her family and community. Women’s health must be prioritized to promote both public health and economic growth. Women’s health issues, particularly those related to chronic conditions and mental health, are responsible for a large portion of healthcare expenditures in the U.S., with the costs related to these conditions impacting women disproportionately.

There is a tremendous opportunity to improve women’s health. It’s an opportunity to invest capital, spur innovation, and enable the nearly four billion mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives across around the world to live better, healthier lives.  However, improving healthcare for women requires transformation across multiple interdependent systems such as clinical practice, medical education, scientific research, healthcare policy, payment models, cultural norms, and investment capital.  More challenging, each of these systems operate on different timelines, with different stakeholders, and often with conflicting incentives.  However, prioritized improvement across the entire ecosystem can result in enduring progress in care by breaking systemic cycles of poor healthcare.


Improving Healthcare for Women is a Wicked Problem

The problem is wicked when we recognize that “improvement” itself is contested and means different things to different stakeholders, making it extremely difficult to define success or failure objectively.

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• For patients, improvement might mean shorter diagnostic timelines, better pain management, or simply being believed by their providers.
• For clinicians, it might mean access to better diagnostic tools or more time with patients.
• For health systems, it might mean reducing costs and improving throughput.
• For researchers, it might mean validated biomarkers and clearer disease classifications.
• For pharmaceutical companies, it might mean profitable treatment pathways.
• For payers, it might mean demonstrated ROI on preventive interventions.
• For policymakers, it might mean measurable population health metrics.
• For investors, it might mean de-risked opportunities with clear paths to scale.

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These goals are not just different, but often in direct tension.  Attempts to solve one dimension may worsen others, and the problem continuously evolves as stakeholders adapt to interventions, creating a moving target where traditional problem-solving approaches.

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What is a Wicked Problem?
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In 1973, design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber introduced the term “wicked problem” in order to draw attention to the complexities and challenges of addressing planning and social policy problems. Unlike the “tame” problems of mathematics and chess, the wicked problems of planning lack clarity in both their aims and solutions. In addition to these challenges of articulation and internal logic,  they are subject to real-world constraints that prevent multiple and risk-free attempts at solving. As described by Rittel and Webber, wicked problems have 10 important characteristics:

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• They do not have a definitive formulation.
• They do not have a “stopping rule.” In other words, these problems lack an inherent logic that signals when they are solved.
• Their solutions are not true or false, only good or bad.
• There is no way to test the solution to a wicked problem.
• They cannot be studied through trial and error. Their solutions are irreversible so, as Rittel and Webber put it, “every trial counts.”
• There is no end to the number of solutions or approaches to a wicked problem.
• All wicked problems are essentially unique.
• Wicked problems can always be described as the symptom of other problems.
• The way a wicked problem is described determines its possible solutions.
• Planners, that is those who present solutions to these problems, have no right to be wrong. Unlike mathematicians, “planners are liable for the consequences of the solutions they generate; the effects can matter a great deal to the people who are touched by those actions.”

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