Most health-care spend isn’t a treatment problem, it’s a timing problem, according to Dr. Kristy Prouse, chief medical advisor of women’s health at Science&Humans, during a session at Benefits Canada’s 2026 Vancouver Benefits Summit.
Global life expectancy has increased 19 years over the past six decades, she said, but the proportion of life spent in poor or moderate health hasn’t changed. While women live longer than men, they spend 25 per cent more of their lives in poor health.
“If societies scale access to proven cost-effective preventative interventions, we could instead gain nearly a decade of additional healthy life.”
Prouse noted that prevention is among the highest return on investment available to organizations that bear the downstream cost when health issues go unmanaged. The current health-care model is focused on sick care, not preventative care, she added, noting the model needs to evolve to become more personalized, proactive, data-informed and continuous.
Hormones — the body’s primary communication system — affect metabolism, energy, mood, cardiovascular function, bone density, cognitive performance, reproductive health and immune regulation, she said. As a result, hormonal disruption quietly reshapes health trajectories in both men and women throughout adulthood.
“Hormonal disruption, whether in the form of estrogen decline, testosterone suppression, thyroid dysfunction, [hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal] axis diysregulation, typically precedes formal diagnosis by years. Early intervention changes the arc of disease; late intervention manages the consequences.”
Across the health-care system broadly, 90 per cent of spend goes to managing downstream consequences of hormonal and metabolic dysregulation, noted Prouse, whereas preventative care captures roughly five per cent. “We’re funding the downstream costs of a process whose upstream signals were present and potentially modifiable.”
Read: A closer look at menopause-inclusive workplaces
For example, there was a 32 per cent reduction in coronary heart disease events in women who initiated hormone therapy within 10 years of menopause or before age 60.
Michele Romanow, brand ambassador and investor at Science&Humans, said the current health-care system remains largely reactive. “The entire system has been designed to manage sick days, disability claims and turnover, but those really aren’t health-care metrics, they’re failure metrics.
“Health isn’t the absence of illness, it’s the ability to perform.”
Read more coverage of the 2026 Vancouver Benefits Summit.