Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

It's Lindsay Smith Rogers. Today, menopause, a universal life stage that has often been overlooked in health care despite its broad impacts on women's health.

Stephanie Desmond talks to two Johns Hopkins primary care doctors, Tina Zang and Wendy Bennett, about our evolving understanding of menopause care and hormone therapy, as well as emerging challenges from social media influencers and menow washing,

where unproven products are marketed as treatments and can be misleading.

Let's listen.

Wendy Bennett and Tina Zhang, thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for having us.

We're so excited to be here.

Thank you.

Sometimes menopause is framed as this silent topic, but I got to tell you, in my circle of friends,

it's all we talk about all the time.

But when it comes to the health care system, research, public health, it's still surprisingly

overlooked.

Tina, why is that?

Yeah, that's a great question, Stephanie. I think menopause has been kind of overlooked. Tina, why is that? Yeah, that's a great question, Stephanie. I think menopause has

been kind of overlooked in medical education and clinical care for the longest time. And there are a

couple of reasons behind it. But I think one of the biggest drivers is because some research in the past made it seem like hormone

therapy had more risks than benefits. A whole generation of women were recommended to not

take hormone therapy. And as a result, they just thought maybe we should just not talk about it.

...