Ad copy

Across family medicine, internal medicine, and OB-GYN, fewer than 7% of residents say they feel prepared to manage menopause. And even in OB-GYN, the one specialty whose entire job is women’s bodies, only 31% of residency programs have any menopause curriculum at all. These are the people who will care for you for the next 30 years of your life. Almost none of them were trained for the thing half the population goes through. We built a system of women’s healthcare that mostly stops paying attention the moment reproduction ends. Almost half your life happens after that point. And for most of it, you walk into clinics staffed by people who were taught almost nothing about what menopause does to your body. Estrogen has receptors in your heart, your bones, your brain, your kidneys, your blood vessels. So this is not an OB-GYN problem. It is a cardiology problem. A nephrology problem. An orthopedic problem. It belongs to everyone, and almost no one is trained for it. The Menopause Society is building a certification program and I am glad it exists. But it is voluntary. It comes after training is already over. It costs money and time. So the clinicians who opt in are the ones who already care. The gap stays exactly where it was. In plain terms: optional education does not close a systemic gap. Only a requirement does. This has to be built into every clinical training program, for every clinician who will ever treat a woman. Not a weekend course. Not an elective. The standard. Menopause is inevitable. Suffering is not. Let’s act like it.