When Innovation Meets Equity: Reflections on “Beyond Band-Aids” at CSW70

As a physician, I have spent my career believing that good medicine means treating the whole person — not just the symptoms. That conviction brought me to Conference Room 8 at UN Headquarters on March 18th for one of CSW70’s most thought-provoking side events: Beyond Band-Aids: Innovation to Improve Women’s Healthcare, organized by the Holy See and the FEMM Foundation.

The event opened with a frank acknowledgment of a reality too many of my colleagues hesitate to name: women’s healthcare has been systematically underfunded and under-researched for decades. The result is a troubling default — hormonal suppression prescribed not to restore health, but to mask symptoms we haven’t invested enough in understanding. Speakers from FEMM and the Reproductive Health Research Institute presented a compelling alternative: diagnostic protocols that use lab work, symptom tracking, and imaging to identify and treat root causes, restoring hormonal health rather than suppressing it.

As a male doctor, an endocrinologist to be specific, I left with something I didn’t fully anticipate — humility. The women in that room, researchers, advocates, and patients alike, reminded me that listening is itself a clinical skill. When women describe being dismissed or normalized into suffering, that is a systemic failure, and one our profession must own.

Gender equality in healthcare isn’t a political position. It’s a medical imperative. Events like this one remind us that innovation only fulfills its promise when it reaches everyone equally.

Nashwan Al Othman, MD, MBA

Doctor, Refugee, and Gender Equality Advocate.