Hey there,
With the upcoming ‘Summer of Sport’ ahead of us, my next long-read piece, coming on Wednesday, is very topical.
It is all about female sports science and cycle-synced fitness with the help of a brilliant expert, Nancy Best. Look out for it in your inboxes.
Is anyone else an Olympic Games fanatic? I still get a buzzy feeling when I think back to London 2012 and how the city came together to host it. More of that, please.
But this week brings exciting news for understanding estrogen in the menopause transition. Finally!
Three ways to help close the gender health gap
Learn what brain imaging tells us about menopause
A new study led by neuroscientist Dr Lisa Mosconi has successfully measured estrogen activity in the brain for the first time.
This is a huge moment for menopause. It enables us to understand how the brain works during the menopause transition and potentially predict menopausal symptoms.
The findings also show that estrogen receptors remain active for up to a decade post-menopause. As Dr. Mosconi says: ‘it hints that the ‘window of opportunity’ for estrogen therapy is greater than thought.’
I think there’s cause for us all to get very excited about this.
Read a full summary here and the full findings here.
Read proof of the absence of innovation in maternal health medicine
Trigger warning: mentions of maternal mortality
Despite many advances in care, pregnancy-related causes still resulted in the deaths of over 287,000 women in 2020. Such shocking statistics have led to a united global mission, with a UN Sustainable Development Goal that sets the target to accelerate the decline of maternal mortality by 2030.
To help stop these deaths, activity often focuses on the quality of maternity services, but little emphasis is put on biomedical research and development.
A new analysis in The Lancet Global Health shows a chronic lack of innovation within maternal health medicine. Since the 1950s, only two products have come to market specifically for pregnancy-specific conditions.
Read more about the challenges and how we might overcome them in the full analysis here.
Share your birthing experience
Did you, like me, have a baby in the last five years in the UK?
As we all know, having a baby in this ‘COVID era’ was complicated. Rules changed daily, information was difficult to decipher, and, to be honest, care wasn’t always what it should be.
King’s College London is running The Birth Experience Study (BESt -UK) to understand the impact of these last few years. The study aims to explore the factors that make a good birth experience, the prevalence of birth trauma, and how the different models of care influence outcomes.
Read more about it here. Please be mindful that the research will ask some challenging questions that could provoke difficult emotions. Take the survey here.
Bonus this week is for anyone working at the intersection between climate change and women’s health. The United Nations Population Fund has launched the Climate Change XX: Women’s Health in Focus Challenge. The winning research proposal will win seed funding of up to $15,000. Apply here
If you enjoyed reading this, please do like or shout about it!
When not curating this email, I help women’s health brands find their voice and stand out in a busy market. Are you finding it harder to stand out in this busy women’s health market? Do you need help raising your voice? You need my Communications Coaching workshop.
Thanks very much for reading,
Hannah