European Women’s Health across the Life-Course — WHEEL
Inequality, diagnostic delay and prevention across the female life-course. A four-credit core unit taught inside the medical degree, in which health policy is studied as a subject in its own right and then applied to the field where the gap between what medicine knows and what health systems deliver is widest and best documented.
Reviewed and kept current
Last editorial review: 2 August 2026 · Next scheduled refresh: 1 February 2027.
About this module
This module concerns the health of women across the life-course and the systematic inequalities that shape it: delayed diagnosis, under-representation in the evidence base, and the discontinuity of care at the menopausal transition. Its clinical spine runs from the menopausal transition and bone health, through migraine and post-menopausal cardiometabolic risk, to diagnostic delay in cancer and the perimenopausal presentation of neurodevelopmental conditions.
The premise taught throughout is that diagnostic delay is not an accident of individual consultations. It is a property of pathways, and pathways are set by policy.
Learning outcomes
On completion of this module, the student will be able to:
The four units
Each unit comprises one evening seminar in policy, one weekend workshop in applied practice, directed e-learning, and a mapped segment of the on-campus week.
Unit 1 · Governing health, and where sex sits within it
Seminar — policy, 2 h. European competence in health and the European Health Union architecture. How gender is mainstreamed in health policy — where it binds and where it does not. The instruments through which gender-health objectives are pursued, and the relationship between European policy and national delivery.
Comparative material. The structure of a national women’s health strategy: how objectives are set, how delivery is measured, and where accountability sits.
Workshop — clinical, 3 h. The menopausal transition, bone, and the post-fracture care gap. The menopausal and perimenopausal transition and its systemic consequences. Osteoporosis: case-finding, the post-fracture care gap, treatment thresholds and long-term management. Case-based work.
Unit 2 · The gender health gap as a policy object
Seminar — policy, 2 h. European parliamentary work on the gender gap in health and healthcare. The emerging European women’s health strategy and the European gender equality strategy. How gender inequality operates in medical research, drug development and access, and what policy proposes to do about it.
Comparative material. The renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England of April 2026 and its commitments — voice and accountability, access and waiting, pain and procedure, prevention and genomics, and evidence — together with the integrated women’s health hub as a service model.
Workshop — clinical, 3 h. Migraine disparities and post-menopausal cardiometabolic risk. Sex differences in migraine: burden, hormonal triggers, management. Loss of pre-menopausal cardioprotection, and the shared vascular substrate linking the menopausal transition to cardiometabolic multiple long-term conditions.
Unit 3 · Data, evidence and algorithmic fairness
Seminar — policy, 2 h. The European Health Data Space: primary and secondary use, safeguards, cross-border flows, and why sex-disaggregated data governance matters clinically. The European Artificial Intelligence Act: risk classification and the bias and fairness obligations attaching to algorithms trained on male-predominant data. Health technology assessment and access to women’s health interventions.
Workshop — clinical, 3 h. Diagnostic delay: cancer and perimenopausal neurodevelopmental unmasking. Delayed cancer diagnosis in women — pathways, presentation, and where in the system delay is generated. Perimenopausal presentation of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and anxiety, and the mechanisms of prior under-recognition.
Unit 4 · Prevention, inequality and service design
Seminar — policy, 2 h. Inequality, benchmarking and service design. Health inequality as a policy object across deprivation, ethnicity and inclusion health. Audit and benchmarking as instruments of health governance. Designing an integrated women’s health service against a defined policy objective. Project scaffolding.
Workshop — clinical, 3 h. Precision prevention and behaviour change for midlife women. Risk stratification across the menopausal transition. Combined pharmacological and behavioural intervention: menopausal hormone therapy in context, bone protection, cardiometabolic risk reduction. Digital phenotyping through the perimenopausal transition, with the evidence caveats stated.
Curriculum balance
Of the 120 hours of workload, fifty are taught, divided between the two strands by rule. The format itself is set out in the programme overview.
| Component | Detail | Total h | Policy | Clinical |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evening seminars | 4 × 2 h, one per unit | 8 | 8 | 0 |
| Weekend workshops | 4 × 3 h, one per unit | 12 | 0 | 12 |
| On-campus intensive week | 5 days × 6 h | 30 | 20 | 10 |
| Total taught | 56 : 44 | 50 | 28 | 22 |
| Workload | Detail | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Live virtual | Seminars and workshops | 20 |
| Directed e-learning | Structured reading and checks | 25 |
| On-campus week | Applied teaching | 30 |
| Benchmarking project | Supervised | 30 |
| Assessment preparation | Reading and revision | 15 |
| Total | Contact 50 : self-directed 70 | 120 |
The intensive week
Five days, six hours daily, entirely applied. The week is not lectures moved into a room; it is where the preparation phase is put to work.
| Day | What students do | Policy h | Clinical h |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Governance to bedside — design an integrated women’s health service against a defined policy objective, in groups | 6 | 0 |
| Tuesday | Midlife clinical intensive — menopause, bone and cardiometabolic risk, case-based, applying current guidance | 0 | 6 |
| Wednesday | Data and fairness clinic — governed audit method; appraising a female-specific algorithm for bias | 6 | 0 |
| Thursday | Pathways and prevention — cancer and neurodevelopmental pathways; screening; inequality analysis; consultation practice | 3 | 3 |
| Friday | Project presentations and oral defence; final written paper | 5 | 1 |
| Total | Thirty hours on campus | 20 | 10 |
Assessment
Continuous 60 : summative 40 of marks. Two instruments, four sittings, both split across the continuous and summative axes.
| Instrument | What it tests | Weight | Continuous | Summative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Written paper | Single-best-answer, mapped to policy instruments and current guidance | 40% | 25% | 15% |
| Benchmarking project | Protocol, interim portfolio, written report and oral defence | 60% | 35% | 25% |
| Total | 100% | 60% | 40% |
Progression
The benchmarking project
Each student selects a women’s health indicator from their own country or region — menopause care, osteoporosis case-finding, or a diagnostic-delay measure — benchmarks it against a defined policy objective, and proposes an implementable improvement within a health-data-governance frame. Supervised, with a protocol milestone and an interim portfolio, and defended orally in the final session.
Instrument, rubric and marking standard are fixed; dataset and comparator are chosen locally — so students work with data that matters to them while the academic standard stays equivalent.
Key sources
Taught from primary sources
Every citation is verified against the primary source before publication. Full reference lists are issued with the module materials.
- European policy and law. European competence in health under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union · the European Health Union · European parliamentary research on the gender gap in health and healthcare · the emerging European women’s health strategy · the European gender equality strategy · the European Health Data Space Regulation · the European Artificial Intelligence Act · the Health Technology Assessment Regulation.
- United Kingdom comparator. The renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England of April 2026 and the ten-year health plan for England, including the integrated women’s health hub within the neighbourhood model.
- Clinical guidance. European and national menopause guidance · osteoporosis and fracture-liaison guidance · migraine sex-difference literature · reviews of the menopausal transition and cardiovascular risk.
- Diagnostic delay and evidence gaps. Diagnostic-delay literature in gynaecological and cancer pathways · perimenopausal neurodevelopmental presentation literature · guidance on digital phenotyping and remote monitoring, with evidence caveats stated.
Reviewed and kept current
Content version 1.0 · reviewed August 2026 · next scheduled review February 2027.
Delivery dates
| Delivery | Preparation phase | On-campus intensive week |
|---|---|---|
| Autumn 2026 | Seminars 20, 27 Oct, 3, 10 Nov · workshops 24, 31 Oct, 7, 14 Nov | Monday 16 – Friday 20 November 2026 |
| Spring 2027 | Four Tuesday seminars and four Saturday workshops, February–March | Monday 22 – Friday 26 March 2027 |
Where next
Read the programme overview for the format and pedagogy, see the companion module, or review the institutional guidance if you are considering adoption.
© 2026 MD Acumen Ltd · Acumen Institute of Primary Care · An MD Acumen school · Registered in England and Wales · 16538952ECTS credit is awarded by the host institution under learning agreement; the Institute does not award academic credit.
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