IssuesThis project seeks to address insufficient financing of and limited access to healthcare for women, which constrains their economic and social potential. These challenges exacerbate economic dependency ratios and demographic imbalances in 16 of the 21 APEC economies.
APEC Project HWG 06 2022S (“APEC Smart Families”) convened a multi- stakeholder group of experts who provided input into development of the APEC Smart Families Menu of Policy Options, which was designed to better position APEC economies to mitigate consequences from these demographic trends. The goal of this project is to convene APEC health, women’s empowerment, and finance policymakers with a multi-stakeholder group of subject-matter experts to discuss innovative health financing mechanisms for implementing policies aligned with the Menu of Policy Options.
The workshop will provide a platform for APEC economies to discuss measures that proactively and holistically create an enabling environment for a comprehensive approach to women’s health. The APEC Smart Families Sustainable Financing Framework for Women’s Health will reflect multi- stakeholder input from the workshop, and APEC economies will be encouraged to adapt the framework to fund, implement, and scale combinations of policies as relevant to their individual settings. By creating the APEC Smart Families Sustainable Financing Framework for Women’s Health, the project aims to provide economies with actionable strategies to overcome existing barriers that hinder access to women’s health, ensuring long-term benefits for both individual and collective economic resilience.
Eligibility and Fund PrioritiesThis project aligns with the Women and the Economy Sub-Fund criteria by promoting cross-fora collaboration in the fiscal space for women’s health, as it will be endorsed by the PPWE and involve APEC ministries responsible for finance, women’s empowerment, and health. The initiative will deliver capacity-building activities for APEC developing economies, enhancing their ability to design and implement sustainable financing mechanisms for women’s health. It directly supports the PPWE pillar of "skills, capacity building, and health" by addressing the intersection of economic participation and health outcomes for women.
The APEC Smart Families Sustainable Financing Framework for Women’s Health will enable economies to implement the policies enumerated in the APEC Smart Families Menu of Policy Options, which aim to foster demographic resilience, or the concept that economies can forecast different demographic trends and better position themselves to respond to associated impacts.
Capacity BuildingThis project will build the capacity of policymakers in the spheres of health, women’s empowerment, and finance to sustainably implement comprehensive, holistic women’s health policies that help to improve health outcomes and avoid and reverse the long-term economic challenges posed by the region’s demographic trends. The workshop will convene policymakers across the APEC region, as well as subject-matter experts from a variety of stakeholder groups, such as NGOs, academia, international organizations, and industry.
Programming will center on the innovative health financing mechanisms for implementing and scaling up the policies enumerated in the APEC Smart Families Menu of Policy Options. Workshop programming will be memorialized in a Framework, which will provide a “how-to” guide for policymakers to create the appropriate financial instruments (e.g., define the problem, identify the target cohort, determine the KPIs, convene the stakeholders, design the service and financial model, mobilize delivery, evaluate the impact, etc.).
Following the development of the Framework, the project will seek an agreement with at least one developing APEC economy, such as Peru, to co-create and pilot the Framework to increase access to women’s health.
