Menopause has been having a second currently, and Washington is taking discover. On Sept. 16, the Senate held its first hearing on the dismal state of federally funded menopause analysis and huge gaps in therapy and care. Inside 24 hours, the Division of Well being and Human Companies additionally convened pharmaceutical producers and physicians to troubleshoot the alarming lack of availability of estradiol patches, an important menopause hormone therapy, and the Meals and Drug Administration held a full day of professional panels on female-dosed testosterone, which is at present solely FDA-approved for males.
One week later, Well being and Human Companies joined the American Urological Assn. for a dialogue a few silent killer of postmenopausal girls: urosepsis from recurrent urinary tract infections. There’s a easy resolution — localized vaginal estrogen — and but due to outdated tips and lack of clinician coaching, the remedy is simply too typically ignored or denied. Neither is the prescription routinely lined by Medicare, regardless of its well-established well being and longevity advantages for ladies over age 65.
These are among the many makes an attempt to now, lastly, deal with many years of coverage failures — a refreshing change, fairly frankly, given neither political occasion has ever prioritized menopause. That 2026 marks the 12 months when menopause has entered the coverage area comes as little shock to me. I’ve been beating this drum for years. Each side of each day life that menopause touches — the hovering value of medical care, insufficient entry to medical health insurance, excessive underinvestment in scientific analysis targeted on girls’s well being, even the myriad methods midlife girls are stretched to the restrict caring for teenagers and getting older dad and mom — is smack in the midst of the political zeitgeist. These are the kitchen desk points on the minds of voters this election.
Menopause second, meet the midterms.
One other problem rightly revealed by menopause is the chasm of public belief in authorities. As one of many 4 professional witnesses who testified on the Senate, I used to be heartened that it was a real bipartisan endeavor. However that’s a rarity lately in Congress, an establishment rife with dysfunction. Our federal well being businesses have develop into so shamelessly politicized they’re on a collision course with science — from HHS’ overt strikes to undermine childhood vaccines, to the decimation of leadership on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, which is struggling to answer the disaster of measles outbreaks throughout the nation.
My aim as a coverage advocate is to assist flip the tide on this nation’s lengthy report of neglect on the subject of menopause. Like many different girls’s and reproductive well being advocates, after the 2024 election l turned my consideration to state legislatures — not simply as a comfort prize however as a method to check what vary of reforms have been possible and to get as many good legal guidelines as doable handed. It was the appropriate transfer. During the last two years, greater than 60 payments have been launched in 28 states — to do issues like require non-public insurance coverage and Medicaid to cowl menopause care and therapy, enhance clinician coaching and public schooling, and bolster antidiscrimination safety within the office. Ten of these states now have 21 legal guidelines on the books.
California is one and might declare actual management. Among the many payments handed by the Legislature, Assembly Bill 2270 from 2023-24 incentivizes persevering with medical schooling on menopause for clinicians, nearly all of whom obtain little to zero coaching whereas in medical faculty and residency. The California Division of Corrections is now collaborating with medical specialists to assist carry menopause sources to incarcerated women in state prisons.
Newsom additionally simply vetoed AB 1940, which might have codified menopause as a protected class within the state’s office antidiscrimination legal guidelines.
The Legislature has been particularly deft at easing entry to FDA-approved hormonal therapies, together with testosterone, typically used off-label by menopausal girls: AB 82 ends the requirement to report prescriptions to the state’s monitoring database; AB 1778 proactively declassifies testosterone as a managed substance below state regulation, ought to there be motion in Washington to do the identical below federal regulation.
Though Newsom twice vetoed payments to mandate insurance coverage protection for menopause therapy — and deserved all of the flak he acquired — the 2026-27 state finances features a minor course right: a $3.4-million “trailer bill” to spend money on public schooling and make menopause therapies extra reasonably priced; Medi-Cal sufferers usually are not totally lined by the addendum, although, making it a toothless reform for many who want assist probably the most.
Why ought to California’s menopause agenda, or that of the opposite 27 states which have launched reforms, matter to the remainder of the nation? They provide helpful fashions of what to do — or within the case of Medicaid exclusion, what to not do — in crafting significant insurance policies. Maybe extra vital, they provide a rationale that may assist persuade the general public; those that may balk at a congressional invoice or federal coverage, partially due to skepticism of the federal authorities or the present administration, can take heed to and study from different stakeholders, together with governors and state lawmakers and activists.
Take for instance the FDA decision in November 2025 to take away the long-critiqued “black field” warning on estrogen merchandise for menopause. This was the fruits of a decade-long marketing campaign by physicians, researchers and scientists — who had been waging the battle for correct labeling properly earlier than the acronym MAHA ever existed and no matter which occasion held energy. But the very picture of Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. utilizing his second on the podium to credit score the Trump administration’s deep dedication to girls’s well being posed a severe credibility problem. Aligned and contemporaneous state reforms supplied much-needed reassurance and readability to many.
Belief in authorities is understandably at a low level, however this occurs to be when menopause lastly has caught the eye of policymakers in any respect ranges of energy. Some are taking long-overdue steps for ladies’s well being, nevertheless implausibly. Let’s take the wins.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is the writer of “When in Menopause: A Person’s Handbook & Citizen’s Information.” She is government director of NYU Regulation’s Birnbaum Girls’s Management Heart.
