For decades, women have been asking for better menopause care.
More research. Better-trained healthcare providers. Greater access to treatment. More conversations about symptoms that can affect everything from sleep and sexual health to work, relationships, and quality of life.
In September 2026, some of those conversations reached a new level.
For the first time, the U.S. Senate held a congressional hearing dedicated specifically to menopause.¹ The very next day, the FDA brought together clinicians, researchers, patients, and other stakeholders for a public workshop examining testosterone use in menopausal women.²
And during the same week, federal health officials were discussing another issue affecting women seeking menopause care: access to estrogen patches.³
Three major federal conversations about menopause in one week.
That didn’t happen in a vacuum.
Women, clinicians, researchers, and advocates have been asking for more attention to menopause for years.
Now, those conversations are reaching places where research priorities, medical education, regulatory decisions, and healthcare policy are discussed.
This is what happens when women keep asking questions.
On September 16, 2026, the Senate Special Committee on Aging held the first congressional hearing specifically devoted to menopause.¹
Even its title acknowledged how overdue the conversation was:
“Half the Country, Zero Hearings: Meeting the Moment to End the Menopause Care Gap in America.”¹
The hearing focused on gaps in three major areas: menopause research, healthcare professional training, and care.¹
Those aren’t abstract issues.
Menopause can involve vasomotor symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats as well as sleep disturbances, genitourinary symptoms, sexual concerns, mood changes, and changes affecting bone and cardiovascular health.⁴˒⁵
Yet menopause care hasn’t always received the same level of research, education, or clinical attention as its prevalence might suggest.
Research examining medical education has identified gaps in menopause training and clinician preparedness. One U.S. study involving residents in internal medicine, family medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology found important deficiencies in menopause knowledge and preparedness.⁶
That can matter when a woman walks into a healthcare provider’s office looking for answers.
The significance of the Senate hearing wasn’t that it suddenly solved those problems.
It was that, for the first time, those problems had a congressional hearing dedicated to discussing them.¹
The momentum wasn’t limited to Congress.
On September 17, the FDA held a public workshop devoted specifically to testosterone use in menopausal women.²
The workshop examined existing evidence as well as major unanswered questions surrounding testosterone and women’s sexual function, cognition, mood, musculoskeletal health, hormone testing, and long-term cardiovascular and breast safety.²
Why does that matter?
Because testosterone is naturally present in women, but there is currently no FDA-approved testosterone product specifically indicated for women in the United States.²˒⁷
Testosterone may already be prescribed off-label in some circumstances, and international consensus guidance supports its use for a specific indication, hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) in appropriately assessed postmenopausal women.⁷˒⁸ But important evidence gaps remain around other potential uses and long-term safety.²˒⁷
Those unanswered questions are exactly why more research matters.
And women themselves have been asking regulators to examine them.
The background reporting that inspired this Wellex series highlighted an especially striking detail: at an earlier FDA meeting about testosterone, women represented the overwhelming majority of public comments and used that opportunity to ask why similar attention wasn’t being paid to testosterone for women.
That’s what makes this moment about more than testosterone.
People asked the question loudly enough that the question became harder to ignore.
There is an important distinction here.
Celebrating greater attention to women’s health doesn’t mean pretending the science is settled.
In fact, good advocacy should create space for more science, not less.
The FDA explicitly says that critical knowledge gaps remain around testosterone use in menopausal women, including questions about cognition, mood, musculoskeletal health, measurement, and long-term cardiovascular and breast safety.²
The same principle applies across menopause care.
We need high-quality research to understand which interventions work, for whom, at what dose, for which symptoms, and with what benefits and risks.
Current evidence already supports several treatments for menopause symptoms. Menopausal hormone therapy, for example, is considered the most effective treatment for bothersome vasomotor symptoms and can help prevent bone loss in appropriately selected patients.⁹
But better evidence and better access to that evidence can coexist.
Asking for more menopause research isn’t an admission that we know nothing.
It’s recognition that women deserve the same scientific curiosity, investment, and clinical attention given to other major areas of health.
Research is only one part of the problem.
The Senate hearing also focused on healthcare professional training.¹
That’s important because even the strongest evidence doesn’t automatically reach the person sitting in an exam room.
Studies have identified gaps in menopause education among medical trainees.⁶ And when healthcare professionals don’t feel adequately prepared to recognize and manage menopause symptoms, patients may face longer or more complicated paths to appropriate care.
Improving menopause care therefore isn’t just about discovering the next treatment.
It’s also about making sure healthcare professionals understand the evidence we already have.
That means better education about menopause symptoms, evidence-based treatment options, individualized risk assessment, and when referrals to appropriately trained clinicians may be helpful.
Women shouldn’t have to become experts in menopause before they can have an informed conversation about their own health.
Research and education don’t mean much if women can’t access the treatments they have already been prescribed.
That’s why another federal conversation happening during the same week matters.
The related Wellex reporting highlighted growing concern about access to transdermal estrogen patches as demand increased.
That brings another piece of the menopause-care puzzle into focus.
It isn’t enough to know that an evidence-based treatment exists.
Women need healthcare professionals who understand it.
They need the opportunity to discuss whether it’s appropriate for them.
And if it is prescribed, they need reliable access to it.
Research. Education. Access.
They are different problems, but they’re connected.
And seeing all three discussed at the federal level within the same week helps explain why September 2026 felt like a significant moment for menopause care.
It’s easy to look at a congressional hearing or FDA workshop and see another meeting.
But meetings can matter when they bring overlooked questions into formal research, regulatory, and policy discussions.
The Senate hearing formally examined gaps in menopause research, training, and care.¹
The FDA workshop was specifically designed to examine existing testosterone evidence and identify knowledge gaps that could inform future research and potential drug development.²
Neither guarantees a particular policy or regulatory outcome.
But both mean menopause questions are being discussed in forums where future research, education, and regulation can be shaped.
And that’s worth recognizing.
For years, women have talked openly about struggling to get answers for symptoms that affect their daily lives.
They’ve asked why certain treatments aren’t available.
They’ve asked why their healthcare providers weren’t taught more about menopause.
They’ve asked why we still don’t have answers to basic questions about female hormones and healthy aging.
Researchers, clinicians, patients, and advocates have kept raising those questions.
Now some of them are being asked at the federal level.
The menopause care gap didn’t disappear because Congress held a hearing.
There are still unanswered research questions.
There are still gaps in medical education.⁶
There are still treatments women may struggle to access.
And there are still areas of women’s hormonal health where stronger long-term evidence is needed.²˒⁷
But progress doesn’t have to mean the problem is finished.
Sometimes progress looks like getting the problem onto the agenda in the first place.
It looks like women sharing their experiences.
It looks like clinicians asking for better evidence.
It looks like researchers identifying what we still don’t know.
It looks like patients submitting public comments and demanding that their questions be studied.
And eventually, it can look like the first congressional hearing on menopause.
September 2026 wasn’t the end of the conversation about menopause care.
It was evidence that the conversation is getting harder to overlook.
For the first time, Congress held a hearing devoted specifically to menopause.¹ The FDA convened a workshop dedicated to unanswered questions about testosterone use in menopausal women.² And concerns about access to menopause treatments were receiving federal attention during the same week.
The gaps are still real.
But so is the momentum.
Women deserve rigorous research, informed healthcare providers, access to evidence-based options, and the ability to ask questions about their health without those questions being dismissed as inevitable parts of aging.
Keep asking questions. Keep participating in the conversation. Women’s health deserves a seat at the table.
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