Melinda French Gates is exactly right and her call for a #menopauserevolution is long overdue.
Approximately 1.3 million women enter menopause each year and most will experience symptoms that can last for years, yet our health care system isn’t built to support them through it. Clinician training remains limited, and care delivery falls short, leaving women to navigate symptoms that affect cardiovascular, bone, and mental health at a time when their health risks are increasing.
Melinda is also right to highlight how deeply underfunded women’s health remains. Despite affecting half the population, women’s health issues receive a fraction of funding—just a small share of total research investment—leaving critical life stages like menopause underserved and misunderstood. That lack of prioritization has real consequences for how women experience care. Too often, women leave clinical visits feeling unheard and without answers, without treatment, and without a plan.
As a practicing OB-GYN and Chief Medical Officer of Women’s Health at CVS Health, I’ve spent years working to ensure women have access to meaningful menopause support and benefits. But the reality is, the broader system still hasn’t caught up to what women need at this life stage.
But this is solvable—and it requires exactly the kind of urgency and investment Melinda is calling for.
We need to make menopause care a standard part of clinical training and practice, so every provider knows how to recognize symptoms, assess cardiometabolic risk, and offer evidence-based treatment. We need to integrate midlife care into primary care settings, not silo it. And we need to make access easier through virtual care, community-based models, and benefit designs that meet women where they are.
Most importantly, we need to shift the societal mindset. Menopause is not a niche issue. It is a clinically significant life stage with measurable impacts on heart health, bone health and mental wellbeing. It deserves the same clinical rigor, investment, and dignity as any other major phase of health that we routinely diagnose, treat, and prioritize. Half the population depends on it.
Women deserve better. And now is the moment to deliver it.
