Who: The client was Welsh Government, NHS Wales and Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW), who were developing the first dedicated Women’s Health Website for Wales: a new one-stop resource covering women’s health across the full life course, from first period to post-menopause. This project was commissioned through Co-production Lab Wales.
The brief: To engage diverse women across Wales to shape the development of the website in real time, across its full development lifecycle — from initial discovery through to feedback on the live site. Rather than a single round of consultation at the start, the brief called for an iterative process: insights fed directly to the development team as they built, so that what women said could genuinely influence what ended up on the page.
What I did: I led the project as team lead, working with colleagues across four phases of engagement between November 2025 and February 2026. We reached 72 participants across more than 20 sessions – online and in person, in English and Welsh – working with community groups, in online workshops, in one to one interviews, and through a survey sent to the full cohort. Groups included an LGBTQ+ coffee morning, a Welsh-speaking women’s football team, a women’s swimming group, a learning disability women’s group, a specialist interest group, a minority ethnic women’s community group, a young person’s support service, and members of the Gypsy and Traveller community, among others.
I designed the engagement programme, facilitated sessions, wrote up notes and insight reports after each phase, and managed the client relationship throughout – including a Task and Finish group that gathered all the actors weekly throughout the project. A significant part of the work was professional judgement calls in real time: negotiating the scope of an additional phase of engagement which was possible in the time available, or being transparent with the client when engagement fatigue was setting in rather than pushing for more data for its own sake. I produced the final insights and summary report at the end of the project.
What they said: Participants were generous, committed, and candid throughout. Many stayed with the process across all four phases, and when the website went live several described feeling genuinely moved: “I felt quite emotional looking at the website. I truly hope the website receives the recognition it deserves and is shared widely.” One participant reflected: “Thank you for involving us in this meaningful piece of work – it’s been a really valuable experience for our group.” And one young woman, clicking through the live site for the first time, confirmed: “I think it’s a really good website.”
Perhaps the most satisfying moment in the project was a small, concrete one: a participant suggested a postcode finder on the Women’s Health Hubs page in one of the first conversations; this was implemented by the development team the next day, and when other participants saw it in later sessions they said it was very useful and exactly what was needed.
The client team were equally generous in their end-of-project debrief. One team member reflected: “The work was absolutely amazing, without it we wouldn’t have been able to shape the website. Before the co-production team got involved I thought I had an idea of what women want – I am a topic specialist after all! – but we found out it was different.” Another noted the pace and responsiveness: “You were a really responsive partner. The engagement reports were detailed and thorough but also grouped by themes, delivered at the deadlines when you said you would.” A third highlighted the quality of representation: “You achieved the balance of having lots of different voices and perspectives, but staying neutral and representing them with equal weighting, including the more vocal ones, the ones that were more difficult to engage.”
It was a fast-paced project with shifting parameters and a Christmas break right in the middle, but working with a client team who were genuinely invested in getting it right, and with women across Wales who had so much to say and were so willing to say it, made it one of the most rewarding projects I’ve worked on.
Website at: https://womenshealth.nhs.wales/