CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – To eliminate gender discrimination and recognize women’s participation in achieving sustained economic growth and development, Department of Health (DOH) recently launched the Healthy Women, Healthy Economies (HWHE) Initiative in Central Luzon.
This is an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) initiative that seeks to enhance women’s economic participation by improving women’s health.
“Through HWHE, we want to emphasize women’s empowerment and encourage everyone to support and contribute in the full implementation of the Magna Carta of Women; thereby ensuring man and woman to be partners in the pursuit of the country’s economic, social, cultural, and political developments which are also anchored on the new administration’s commitment of Malasakit at Pagbabago or True Compassion and Real Change,” DOH Medical Officer III Janet Miclat said.
HWHE has a Policy Toolkit, which focuses on the five buckets/categories namely Workplace Health and Safety, Health Awareness and Access, Sexual Reproductive Health, Gender-Based Violence, and Work/Life Balance.
This represents a menu of options that economies may pursue in part or as a whole on key issues on which they want to focus within the HWHE objective.
For her part, DOH Assistant Secretary and Central Luzon Regional Director Leonita Gorgolon shared that the program was conceptualized in 2015 when a group of experts came together in Manila to form a Policy Toolkit to support APEC government officials, policymakers, civil societies and the private sectors seeking to improve female economic participation through better health, cognizant that there is no one size fits all approach.
“In 2016, Region 3 was chosen to be the pilot site for its implementation wherein 12 private companies inside the Clark Freeport Zone agreed to participate. These companies conducted self-assessments and were validated that same year, and were given orientation for the HWHE Incentive Package in February 2017,” Gorgolon recounted.
In between, the official said series of meetings were conducted, strategies were formulated, and interventions were done making the HWHE Initiative a best practice in the Philippines especially in Central Luzon, not only for the nation’s economy, but also as another point of entry of health in specialized population groups.
“With its initial success, we hope that this intervention can make significant changes in the companies who participated in. We are also aiming to expand its implementation to cover not just more companies inside Clark, but also other government and private workplaces who also employ women in their workplace,” Gorgolon added. (CLJD/MJLS-PIA 3)