Melinda French Gates is making a $215 million bet on women's health
The Excerpt
USA TODAY
4.1 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
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Summary
Melinda French Gates is one of the biggest donors to women’s health through Pivotal, her foundation. Now she’s investing another $215 million to improve women’s health. This money will help her longtime work on contraceptive access and maternal care while expanding to a new area: midlife and menopause. With 1 in 10 women leaving the workforce because of menopause, and another 1 in 5 considering retiring early, America faces a crisis of losing our women leaders? What can we do to stop the exodus? Philanthropist and author Melinda French Gates joins The Excerpt to talk about her latest initiative to educate healthcare practitioners and expand outreach in areas where access to menopause care is most limited.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Melinda French Gates is one of the biggest donors to women's health through Pivotal, her foundation. |
| 0:10.0 | Now she's investing another $215 million to improve women's health. |
| 0:15.0 | This money will help her long-time work on contraceptive access and maternal care while expanding to a new area, |
| 0:22.3 | midlife, and menopause. With one in ten women leaving the workforce because of menopause and |
| 0:27.9 | another one in five considering retiring early, America faces a crisis of losing our women leaders. |
| 0:34.7 | What can we do to stop the exodus? |
| 0:40.7 | Hello, and our women leaders. What can we do to stop the Exodus? Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Laura Trujillo, a wellness writer for USA Today. |
| 0:47.5 | Today is Thursday, June 4th, 2006. Today I'm speaking with philanthropist and author Melinda French Gates. Melinda, thank you so |
| 0:56.8 | much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Laura. You've invested significantly in maternal health care, |
| 1:03.5 | but this new effort is a shift to women in midlife. Why is this so important? Well, women's health for too long has been under-prioritized and underfunded. |
| 1:16.6 | And so we need to change that because we know that when we do make the right investments |
| 1:21.6 | in women's health, then women can thrive. |
| 1:24.6 | So yes, I'm actually doubling down on what I already know in terms of women's |
| 1:29.2 | reproductive years, but then I'm adding on now women's midlife because, again, we just haven't |
| 1:35.5 | looked at this area or funded it in the right way at all. |
| 1:39.6 | One study that I looked at shows that one in five women waits a year before a doctor |
| 1:46.1 | diagnosis per menopause. And another said 5% of women seeking help saw 11 doctors before getting |
| 1:53.2 | help. So why do we keep asking women, in essence, to solve these problems for themselves? |
| 2:00.0 | We shouldn't. We should not. We should make sure that |
| 2:04.0 | all medical providers are trained, both OBGYNs but mental health services people, people who are in |
| 2:12.1 | primary care clinics, practitioners. They should all be able to see the signs of perimenopause or menopause |
| 2:19.9 | and then make sure that the woman gets the care that she so deserves. |
... |
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