Over the past few years, one topic in particular has become wildly popular in the public discourse, though it’s certainly not a new phenomenon: Menopause. You’ve likely seen the countless viral articles with headlines like “Menopause is Having a Moment,” and celebrities taking on the cause of awareness and education. Two bestselling tell-all books by Brooke Shields and Naomi Watts have been released in the last month, and Halle Berry shouted “I am in menopause!” to a throng of reporters on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in May 2024, as part of a push for legislation to earmark millions for research on The Change.
This attention helped inspire support for more public policy solutions last year. But one month into 2025, it’s abundantly clear that to keep this momentum alive, we have to get serious about mobilizing the menopausal masses — the legions of everyday people failed by our nation’s dismal investment in and delivery of women’s mid-life healthcare. Enter A Citizen’s Guide to Menopause Advocacy, a free digital booklet Dr. Mary Claire Haver and I teamed up to publish.
The Citizen’s Guide deliberately zeroes in on priorities that already enjoy bipartisan and/or private sector support — issues like investing in research, updating and upgrading public education about menopause and training for healthcare providers, and improving access to menopause treatments. (The guide’s contributors are certainly well-aware of the issues at stake — they include Maria Shriver, who wrote the foreword, and eight leaders in the field: Dr. Sharon Malone, Dr. Lisa Mosconi, Dr. Judith Joseph, Dr. Kelly Casperson, Dr. Corinne Menn, Dr. Rachel Rubin, Tamsen Fadal, and Jannine Versi.) Less fractious among lawmakers than reproductive issues affecting younger women, menopause reforms would improve the lives of 75 million individuals, while boosting the economy and helping families. In fact, these may be among the only women’s health matters that can transcend the political gridlock over the next few years.
We head into this new Congress with promising bipartisan backing for several bills introduced last year, including the comprehensive Advancing Menopause and Mid-Life Women’s Health Act in the Senate, which focuses on education and research. Its ranks of supporters have grown with the addition of Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who spearheaded a House version of the bill. Want to help move things forward? The Citizen’s Guide advises how to contact your representatives and demand they advance this legislation.
As for the White House, the Women’s Health Research Initiative executive order, launched in 2023, is still standing as of this writing (though links to it are scrubbed). Even if it becomes a casualty of future executive orders, it’s already catalyzed nearly a billion dollars in menopause and women’s mid-life health investments. These include grants awarded last October by the Advanced Research Projects for Health and a $500 million Department of Defense commitment to menopause research, among others.
In the face of the administration’s recent order to freeze public communication and spending by federal health agencies — compounded by the Jan. 31 deadline for all federal agencies to strip “gender ideology” from their websites — the online menopause pages at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women’s Health remain available, with future meetings and workshops announced. We believe that the next step should be for the NIH to update its messaging about the safety and efficacy of menopausal hormone treatment, in particular.
Other federal agencies that can enable simple but powerful reforms include the U.S. Food and Drug administration (FDA). The FDA has sole authority to remove the inaccurate warning labels on vaginal estrogen medications, which have discouraged consumers from using the treatment and deprived women of care. Quite frankly, it’s a demand the FDA has refused for years under leadership from both parties. Why shouldn’t we insist it do better now? The Citizen’s Guide is urging advocates to join Unboxing Menopause, a national petition to the FDA to do just that.
Change need not come solely from Washington D.C.: States also have considerable influence to make menopause care more accessible. For example, Louisiana recently implemented a new law that requires Medicaid and private health insurance plans to cover perimenopause and menopause treatments. Illinois is poised to do so, as well: In 2023, its legislature mandated the same for women who’ve undergone hysterectomy; a 2024 amendment expands coverage under all circumstances, going into effect January 2026. Strategies for how to advocate in all 50 states are spelled out in the Citizen’s Guide.
All of this is to say that there is a runway for progress — if we’re committed to fighting for it. And here’s why we should: Menopausal women, like our younger counterparts, must be able to make informed choices about our health. We deserve access to affordable, competent medical care and treatment from trained professionals. We have every right and reason to demand lawmakers and leaders invest in solutions that ensure our well-being, our dignity, our humanity. We owe it to ourselves — and to generations to come — to not back away from this cause, but double down in the pursuit.
We write in the Citizen’s Guide that activism often is a “choose your own adventure story,” one in which everyone has a skill to contribute and a role to play. That’s surely true right now. It will take our collective voice, creativity, and commitment to break through the noise.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is co-author of A Citizen’s Guide to Menopause Advocacy and serves as executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU Law.
