A Few Positive Updates

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Support for women seeking care for menopause symptoms is shaping up to be a bipartisan issue. The 19th News yesterday reported the results of a survey done with YouGov that found that “seven in 10 Americans say health insurance plans should cover menopause treatment like hormone therapy,” and that “this majority position held across age groups, gender and political affiliation.”

Progress has moved rapidly on this front, specifically at the state level, where advocacy has translated into actual, material gains. As The 19th relays, “at least seven states — Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Virginia and Washington — have passed legislation mandating insurance coverage for menopause treatment.” (We have more on the policy front below.)

Meanwhile, a special issue of Science Magazine delves into new info and questions about women and aging. It presents a compelling reframe, which is that we should consider the perimenopause transition as “a key opportunity to support healthy aging and quality of life.”

At the end of the day, women simply want “researchers to prioritize menopause, yet menopause research funding has remained at only a fraction of a percent for decades.” It’d be a good start.

Bye,
Your friends at Gloria

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is breath of fresh air. The author and lawyer — whose impressive (and helpful!) new book, When in Menopause: A Users Manuel & Citizen’s Guide, is out today — remains relentlessly focused on improving public policy for women. We spoke with her this week about the book, menopause advocacy, and more.

What motivated you to write the book, and when did you start writing it?

A friend asked me, "Well, what's the public policy landscape for menopause?" And I said, "I don't know." This was in 2020.

Public policy is the way I envision change in the world. That was the starting gun for me. It took me longer than I would've imagined to unpack everything that was wrong with the status quo and what it would take to find the kinds of policies to re-imagine it – things that would improve medical education, instigate research and research funding, that would ensure that access to care was equitable and affordable for all. Those ideas undergirded what the reforms could be.

What does menopause support look like, particularly in the workplace? 

This is a good week [for this discussion, as] a clip has gone viral of a Pennsylvania legislator saying if there were accommodations required of employers, if he was an employer, he'd be the first to discriminate against women in menopause and to not hire them. I think a lot of people worry he’s saying the quiet part out loud.

If the private sector and CEOs feel strongly that they want to be part of this menopause moment and bandwagon, they can invest in the systemic solutions we're demanding: affordable, available treatments; affordable, available care; educated doctors; and much more robust and funded research.

You’ve mentioned the black-box warning that was recently removed from women's hormone therapy.

Let's not talk in passive voice. We fought for that to be removed. It didn’t just get removed. And it wasn't just patches, it's all estrogen products that are used for menopause, including vaginal estrogen. It's taken about a decade of fighting; a group of physicians petitioned to get the warning label changed in 2014. The FDA denied it in 2018, and, in this resurgence of interest in menopause, the group Let's Talk Menopause organized a petition campaign which got 26,000 signatures. The FDA was listening and we demanded it.

It was a big win to get the label removed, particularly from vaginal estrogen, and have more nuanced language and conversations between doctors and patients replace it.

This book is about advocacy – both personal and in the policy space. How can policy help us?

We know that it's hard to find a doctor who's trained in menopause or who's going to take us seriously. These bills (many are now laws) help doctors get better educated in menopause. Within a couple years, we might have a larger base of doctors who have a deeper knowledge of menopause. The second is mandating that health insurance and Medicaid appropriately cover menopause treatments, which they're not required to do. A lot of people are bumping into this right now with the patch. If I say, "Okay, I can't get my patch right now, but I'll try another form of treatment," my insurance might not cover it. What insurance covers, what the limitations are – that’s being addressed in state legislatures right now.

Fall shopping is easier to justify when you’ll still want to wear the clothes next year. AYR gets that right, with high-quality pieces that work across seasons. Our shopping list includes this classic rugby, the Culture jeans for a more current cut, the cardigan our wardrobe needs, and this very cool jacket. A few good additions with a longer life than the season that inspired them. Shop it all here. #partner

There’s something about high-gloss, croc-embossed leather that makes it the perfect foil for fall shades and textures. We’re noticing it on shoes, belts and bags — including massive totes like this, this, or this from a new, croc-obsessed brand (but for that price, it’d better be leather?). Below, a few of our favorite ways to wear it.

TO READ A much-anticipated new novel from Barbara Kingsolver hits shelves today. In Partita, she returns to Appalachia to tell the story of a middle-aged woman revisiting her youthful dreams of becoming a world-class pianist. The Times is calling it, “a sexy novel about life’s ‘what-ifs.’”

TO REFRESH Nothing exposes the state of your household basics like preparing to host family and friends. We’re getting ahead of the holiday rush and shopping for a few well-priced replacements before things get too busy: cute guest sheets, sheet pans to replace our grungy ones, a very good cast iron pan and pot to feed a crowd, and enough wine glasses for everyone. Shop it all here. #partner

TO LISTEN If you didn’t catch the jaw-dropping expose of the Los Angeles surrogacy scandal reported in The New Yorker a few months ago (or even if you did), you can now listen to their shocking reporting in a new season of the podcast In the Dark.

TO TRY These pitas are delish — soft, fluffy, much better than store-bought. And they’re not hard to make if you follow her instructions.

A very sad story about how wellness grifters target people with cancer. • The hurdles to starting your own school — maybe too low? • Looking back on the nine-year anniversary of a groundbreaking story. • Becoming a grandma now means picking your grandmother name. • “The other epidemic.”

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