Dr. Betty Murray says global health systems ignore menopause entirely, focusing only on contraception and pregnancy. Early menopause, whether natural or induced, sharply raises the risk of heart disease and bone loss. She's calling for menopause care to be built into existing health programs worldwide.
Menopause care is largely absent from global reproductive health and family planning programs, not just in the US, but everywhere, which tends to stop at contraception and pregnancy, meaning that once you're done having babies or that ship has sailed, nobody's looking at it. Nobody's paying attention to it and nobody's funding it. This study is a call to fold menopause care, especially early menopause, which carries its own cardiovascular and bone risks into those same health systems. So we saw this across all, all different communities, but this is true also for the US because the reality is, is the earlier a woman goes through menopause, either medically or naturally, the higher the increased risk of cardiovascular disease is in those women. We have that data.
