Health
New Illinois Laws Aim to Expand Menopause Education, Coverage and Treatment Options
Half the world’s population will experience menopause, but until recently it’s been a topic mostly discussed privately, if at all.
Three new Illinois laws seek to remedy some of the longstanding problems in women’s health care and education by shifting the topic of menopause out of the shadows and making it a main point of conversation.
One recently passed bill, HB5284, creates the Illinois Menopause Equity and Care Act. Some of its provisions include improving access to menopause care, requiring the Illinois Department of Public Health to create educational materials regarding menopause for online viewing and making discrimination of a menopause-related condition a civil rights violation.
“Menopause and perimenopause is a natural part of life,” said state Rep. Camille Lilly (D-Oak Park), who backed the act. “We have been struggling with understanding it as a society and as doctors and we wanted to make sure that education was in front of us. We wanted to make sure women were feeling respected.”
Growing up, Lilly said she heard “absolutely nothing” about menopause from the women in her life, including her mother who had issues related to menopause but never expressed those discomforts.
The most commonly known symptom is hot flashes, which are experienced by 50% to 75% of women and vary by length and severity depending on racial and ethnic background. Black women on average will experience a decade of hot flashes while Latina women will feel the symptom for about nine years. For all women, the average is 7.4 years.
Menopause is the point in time when someone has gone 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period; the time before that is called perimenopause. It’s when the ovaries begin shutting down and a woman’s body stops producing hormones that have been produced since puberty: estrogen and progesterone. It happens gradually, and those hormonal changes can contribute to other problems like depression, anxiety and chronic sleep disturbances.
Two other pieces of legislation, SB3325 and SB3688, both expand menopause education to healthcare professionals. According to the journal of the Menopause Society, less than a third of American OB-GYN residency programs offer a menopause curriculum of any kind.
“If our providers can’t answer our questions, where do we go? To the internet, where there’s a lot of people making a lot of money on non-evidence-based approaches to care,” said Pauline Maki, professor of psychiatry, psychology and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Illinois Chicago. “So it’s really important that we be able to answer the needs of women with evidence-based care.”
The Mayo Clinic estimates that menopause-related symptoms cost the United States $26.6 billion in medical expenses and lost work time annually, while the World Economic Forum puts the number at $120 billion in annual GDP as nearly 30% of women will experience symptoms like insomnia, depression and memory lapses during the height of their career.
“People used to dismiss menopause symptoms as benign without understanding how severe and enduring they can be for women, and also how they can affect other aspects of our health, like our brain health and like our heart health,” Maki said. “With improved understanding from improved research funding, we have a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of menopause on so many things, and there’s more awareness.”
