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Though the topic of menopause and its arrival in a woman’s life has historically been shrouded in secrecy and shame, a remarkable transformation is underway and being led by a new generation of advocates, medical professionals, attorneys, researchers, and entrepreneurs.
Whether it’s through innovative research or technological breakthroughs, these changemakers are boldly stepping into a vast void of information and bringing light to the intersectional areas where menopause impacts a woman’s body: her brain, her heart, her ovaries, her bones and her vagina, too.
Perhaps most importantly, these menopause advocates are sparking overdue conversations about women’s health, encouraging women across the United States and beyond to share their menopause stories with friends, in the media or on social platforms. “For time immemorial, women’s needs have been ignored or minimized. That has got to stop,” says Sharon Malone, M.D. a renowned OB-GYN and advocate. “I know that given adequate information, women are more than capable of making healthcare decisions that make sense for them.” Some of that solid information includes knowing that using “hormone therapy during perimenopause and after menopause is not a dangerous proposition. Instead, it might be lifesaving.”
As we heave collectively toward a tipping point, these leaders will continue to challenge stereotypes and pioneer advancements until women reach full access to quality care. Meet the trailblazers: the women who are reshaping the narrative around menopause, empowering women to thrive and determined to bring us closer to the goal of parity in healthcare in our lifetime.
After thirty years of practicing as an OB-GYN, Sharon Malone, M.D., has fine-tuned the ability to speak for and to women whose needs are most unaddressed. “I am a Black woman who was raised in the South,” she explains. “I know the particular challenges faced by women in marginalized communities.”
Before shifting her attention to menopause, Mary Claire Haver, M.D. and author of the upcoming book The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change With Purpose, Power and Facts, worked as a board-certified OB/GYN. But when she struggled with weight gain at midlife, Haver learned that women in menopause held it in their midsection and that fat could lead to chronic disease.
After much research, Haver discovered that nutrition had a significant impact on women’s health and longevity. That was when she created the Galveston Diet, a program that prioritizes an anti-inflammatory diet, intermittent fasting and engaging with educational material. She says her program has helped thousands of women around the United States protect and enhance their health.
One of Haver’s top goals remains getting her program into the hands of medical students and working doctors. “It makes me sad when I think about how many times I told a patient, ‘This is just normal for your age,’” she says. “The time is over that we are to be treated like small men with periods. We age differently, our diseases are different…and we die differently. We matter just as much at this age as we did when we were fertile.”
Tamsen Fadal is adding her mark on the menopause movement in the way she knows best: quality storytelling. After experiencing a hot flash on live television while co-anchoring the news on PIX11, Fadal was left shaken. “I didn’t know what was happening to me,” she remembers. “I was having brain fog, weight gain and had no sleep. I thought it was stress. I thought it was 100 different things.” As she learned about menopause and how to manage the symptoms, Fadal realized how little other women knew about their bodies or were open about their experience. So she turned to Instagram and on TikTok, where one video she posted listing menopause symptoms got more than 1.3 million views. “It just really took off.”
Realizing that her posts resonated with women and that there was a space for her, Fadal is now helping women think about how to reinvent themselves in midlife and beyond. “Doing these types of stories is what I really want to do,” she says. It also helps that Fadal is going through a reinvention herself. “On November 10th, I’ll sign off as a local anchor,” she shares about her plans in late 2023 to pursue her passion for menopause education full-time. “I’m going to be doing a documentary and a book.”
U.S. advocates looking across the Atlantic for inspiration on how to expand conversations around menopause have much to learn from one public personality: Mariella Frostrup. Known for her candid celebrity television profiles, Frostrup is also a self-described “lifelong campaigner on women’s issues.”
In 2018, she produced a documentary for BBC, The Menopause, “well before the word was deemed acceptable in polite conversation,” she says. “As you can imagine, pitching a program about menopause was a hard sell to a predominantly male commissioning team.” Next, she co-authored Cracking the Menopause, a 2021 comprehensive guide preparing women for menopause.
A year later, she founded Menopause Mandate, an advocacy group that strives to break through the persistent silence and stigma around menopause. Their missions include campaigning for broad training for medical professionals and affordable or free access to hormone therapy. This year, Frostrup recruited Naomi Watts as chair of the group’s U.S. branch, and there’s plans to take it around the globe.
“I’ve made a career of often saying the unsayable,” says Frostrup. “It’s important to speak out because it gives other women the confidence to do likewise and understand they are not suffering alone.”
Working as a urologist and pelvic surgeon, Kelly Casperson, M.D. recognized the glaring disparity in midlife sexual experiences between men and women, and the inadequate medical support for women. “I had a patient in my office crying because of low sexual desire…I didn’t know how to help her,” she remembers. “I started reading all the books, going to the conferences, and a little voice in my head told me that I needed to talk.”
Casperson launched her own podcast in 2020, You Are Not Broken, which led to her book, You Are Not Broken: Stop “Should-ing” All Over Your Sex Life. She shares her sex health research findings, particularly how menopause affects women’s sex lives. “To see a woman be empowered to take care of herself, to ask for what she needs, to learn how to communicate and advocate — that’s what I want for all women.”
These days, Casperson, who is a Flow Advisory Council member, receives messages of gratitude from people saying she’s changed or saved their lives and relationships. The feedback has directed her to a new area to study for her second book: sexual communication in heterosexual relationships during midlife. “Learning how to communicate, how to be more equal and caring for each other…I think there’s a lot of gender norms still in these relationships that are not serving anybody.”
As a general practitioner in the United Kingdom, Louise Newson, M.D. was alarmed about the dearth of information available to doctors and women about perimenopause and menopause. To help get evidence-based and unbiased information to women, she created the Balance platform, a website and top-rated app.
She also opened a clinic, Newson Health, in 2018 — there are now nine locations across the country — to treat women experiencing menopause with a “holistic” approach, meaning that both hormonal and non-hormonal treatments are offered, depending on an individual’s symptoms. “Hormones are incredibly powerful and having the right balance is central to our health and wellbeing,” she explains. “I want to continue spreading awareness about how hormones affect us throughout our lives.”
In her spare time, she hosts a podcast and speaks publicly to raise awareness about women’s health. “It can be tough being the person putting their head above the parapet, especially as a woman in medicine,” says Newson. “But helping women to feel heard and empowered to make decisions about their health is what keeps me going.”
Like many doctors, Jessica Shepherd, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, noticed that menopause was very hard to discuss and manage due to the paucity of information. “I decided to [do] extra work in the space of hormone replacement therapy and metabolic health to understand how it impacts women’s lives,” says Shepherd, adding that women spend 40 percent of their lives in the postmenopausal stage.
Next she turned to the media — she’s a frequent guest on major news programs, such as GMA and CNN, as well as Chief Medical Officer of Verywell Health and a Flow Advisory Council member — to deliver quality information that helps women demystify menopause and other health topics. Though there is more research needed around the impact of one’s metabolism, sleep and hormones on women’s health, and the legislation needed to support that research, Shepherd is encouraged about the progress over the past decade. “Women are getting more comfortable with asking questions that have been taboo in the past,” she says, adding how sharing difficult moments with other women has made this a community effort. “So many women physicians, researchers and advocates are also coming together to make this impact global.”
Before co-founding Let’s Talk Menopause!, a nonprofit organization educating the public about menopause and connecting women to health resources, Donna Klassen was doing work she loved as a licensed social worker.
Her life changed dramatically after a difficult perimenopause transition in her late 40s and breast cancer at age 52 necessitated an oophorectomy (the removal of one or both ovaries) that propelled her into surgical menopause. The subsequent treatment blocked all estrogen production. “I was disheartened to find that many medical professionals lacked the necessary knowledge to address my symptoms.”
For Klassen, opening up about the symptoms she endured — brain fog, poor word retrieval, a heightened irritability, feeling overwhelmed — disrupts the shame associated with menopause. “These challenges ultimately took a toll on my professional life, leading me to leave my job.”
With the organization, Klassen delivers menopause information and stories via monthly online discussions and live symposia. She’s also advocating for legislation that supports women during the menopause transition so they get the care they deserve and don’t have to leave the workforce. “I’m optimistic about the journey ahead and the change we can accomplish.”
Judith Joseph, M.D., a New York City-based psychiatrist, is applying her clinical investigation of children and women’s hormones to understand how hormonal changes can upend a person’s life during menopause. “I only got one class on menopause [in medical school],” she remembers. “Doctors who are already out there practicing aren’t going back to school and learning about [menopause]. There’ll be a lot of misdiagnosis.”
That’s why Joseph is encouraging women — especially Black women and women of color who have less access to health care — to learn the signs of menopause with a system she developed called T.I.E.S. It stands for: “Thinking,” which reflects cognitive changes such as memory loss or word retrieval; “Identity,” reflecting a sense of loss or not knowing oneself; “Emotions,” about the range of high and low feelings from hormonal fluctuations; and “Sleep” from a change in length or quality of sleep.
The goal, says Joseph is for women to ask their medical providers for help, such as organizational skills therapy to create the extra support they need during this time of transition. “Once someone turns a light on, they know what they’re dealing with and are more calm,” she says. “The human brain is afraid of the unknown.”
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf may be best known for her advocacy in the menstrual equity movement — she’s a leading voice in the effort to repeal the tampon tax and authored the book Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity — but recently she’s focused on one target: passing federal legislation to fund comprehensive menopause research.
In early 2022, Weiss-Wolf joined forces with Sharon Malone, M.D. to raise public awareness about how menopause affects women’s health and the need for more medical information. “We deserve to have that knowledge and confidence in how to approach this stage of our lives,” she says. “Research is the foundation on which all other reforms must be built.” Together, Weiss-Wolf and Malone are influencing an untold number of women, through high-profile opinion pieces and advocacy on Capitol Hill.
Though achieving health parity through sensible legislation may elude women in 2023, Weiss-Wolf’s master plan is long. “My advocacy and my writing [are] part of a much larger and more holistic goal,” she says, explaining how she builds “in partnership with people who bring different expertise to the table”: doctors, politicians, scholars, journalists, artists, nonprofit and business leaders, etc. “Activism can take many forms and collectively it can change millions of lives.”
Serving Brooklyn’s 9th Congressional district for the past decade, Congresswoman Yvette Clarke has been an important voice on issues affecting her constituents. “From my early career on the New York City Council to my tenure in Congress, I’ve always prioritized the needs and health of women in my work,” says Clarke. But like many under-funded issues facing women — from maternal healthcare to affordable childcare and the pain of fibroids — menopause is also overlooked, leaving many women to navigate it alone. “I believe that neglect is simply unacceptable.”
That’s why Clarke is working to secure services for women’s reproductive health. She is leading efforts in Congress to introduce a menopause bill in Congress that will direct the NIH to invest more resources in understanding menopause. “While I am immensely proud of my work and advocacy in this space, it’s clear that there is a significant road ahead if we are to reach true progress. It is my hope that, alongside my colleagues in the Democratic Women’s Caucus and our allies, we can build upon the momentum of our previous successes to deliver the change countless American women are depending on.”
As a fourth year medical student, Heidi Snyder Flagg, M.D., remembers working on a chart review of estrogen’s impact on bone density and becoming keenly aware of the hormone’s importance to women’s health. “I became a firm believer of the many benefits of hormone therapy,” she says.
The more time she spent with patients, it became clearer that women were suffering tremendously. “I made a point of reading any follow-up studies from the [Women’s Health Initiative] and educating myself so I could counsel patients one at a time.”
In 2002, Flagg founded Spring OB/GYN in New York City, a medical office that provides healthcare for women throughout their life cycle. A member of the Flow Advisory Council, she’s especially proud of how her office and its all-women team are helping women through their transition into menopause and treating patients’ individual symptoms and overall health. “Every day, I see firsthand how brave and resilient women are: how hard they work raising families, in their careers,” she says. “Being able to provide care and treatment that makes life better and easier to navigate for them motivates me!”
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