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WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

This is on point. I'm Megna Chakra-Bardi.

Emily Hoppus is a researcher for FHI-360, an international NGO.

Her work focuses on family planning and menstrual health. It's a field she's professionally committed to and personally connected with. I have had severe menstrual pain

ever since I started my period when I was 13 years old. And that was a really hard thing to experience as an

adolescent and it only progressed and got worse as I got older. And I had a really fraught

relationship with the healthcare system. So when you're 13, you're still going to a pediatrician.

They don't have expertise in menstrual health.

I wasn't taken seriously.

Even though I told doctors that I passed out from the pain that I was throwing up because I was in so much pain,

a lot of people just said, you know, that's what menstruation is.

You know, your period is hard.

You get pain.

You have symptoms and you just have to deal with it.

And that's part of being a woman, in quotes.

And so that sort of progressed for a long time.

I went to college and I tried to manage my symptoms there and it was really hard and I eventually

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