Hanoi (VNA) - Associate Professor Tran Xuan Bach, a lecturer at the Ha Noi Medical University, was one of the two runners-up of the APEC 2022 Healthy Women, Healthy Economies Research Prize.
The announcement was made during the APEC Women and the Economy Forum on September 7 in Bangkok.
Assoc. Prof Bach studies the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on pregnant women's quality of life, emphasising the urgent need for policymakers to incorporate evidence-based interventions such as expanded telehealth services and counselling, enhanced familial and social support, and community-based health education strategies to improve maternal health outcomes and care satisfaction.
The scientific community, as well as leaders of APEC economies, has for many years valued Vietnam's efforts in promoting gender equality, improving the health of women and children, ensuring access to universal health care, empowering women and promoting their effective engagement in all aspects of social life towards realising sustainable development goals.
In his research, Bach has pointed to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the form of hindering access to the medical care of pregnant women. He also assessed the pandemic's effects on those women's quality of life and mental health, their satisfaction with life and the start of depression.
By analysing multi-level factors to health, the researcher underlined the importance of social and psychological support for pregnant women and suggested ways to improve women's economic situation and health and strengthen the healthcare network after the pandemic. One is to design and roll out a more comprehensive integrated care service for pregnant women infected or affected by COVID-19.
The APEC Women and the Economy Forum: High-Level Policy Dialogue on Women and the Economy (HLPDWE) took place on September 7 in Thailand, aiming to promote women's empowerment in the digital era.
At the forum, the APEC 2022 Healthy Women, Healthy Economies Research Prize winners were announced.
Dr Zheng Ruimin, Director of the Women's Health Care Department at China's National Center for Women and Children's Health, won this year's award with her work on postnatal depression. Dr Zheng's study aims to tackle maternal depression at the earliest stage of pregnancy and recommends routine depression screenings throughout the entire birth process to reduce the disease burden and economic loss on women.
The other runner-up was Dr Jaime Galvez Tan of the Philippines, who studies the causes and effects of adolescent pregnancy and recommends evidence-based solutions for early childhood intervention, including school-based comprehensive sexuality education to improve women's health, well-being and empowerment.
Initially conceived in 2014, the APEC "Healthy Women, Healthy Economies" (HWHE) initiative has been working on a public-private partnership basis across three APEC working groups – the Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy (PPWE), Health Working Group (HWG), and Human Resources Development Working Group (HRDWG) – to improve women's health so women can join, thrive, and rise in the workforce. The HWHE initiative convenes government (health, labour, gender officials), private sector, academia and other interested stakeholders to raise awareness and promote good practices to enhance women's economic participation by improving women's health.
The annual APEC Healthy Women Healthy Economy Research Prize was launched in 2019 in partnership with Merck, a global science and technology company, to spotlight and spur the gathering of much-needed data and evidence around women's health so women can join, rise, and thrive in the workforce. The research winners and runners-up underscore the importance of quality health interventions as the foundation of inclusive recovery strategies./.
