I wouldn’t have written the post if the expected outcome of a woman going to her doctor with (peri)menopause syndroms is to get treatment. The experience of many women also in higher-income countries is more like this: Due to a lack of education, the woman doesn’t link her individual symptomes to menopause. Therefore she goes to her standard doctor. Due to a lack of education, the standard doctor doesn’t link the symptomes to menopause and sends the woman to a specialist. The specialist treats the symptome, but not the cause, or understands the link and there isn’t necessarily a good therapy existing due to a lack of studies and medical development. The findings of a greek study point out the worldwide huge lacks in the healthcare system: ”Overall, training on menopause management is profoundly inadequate even nowadays. Menopause management requires theoretical education and clinical experience for the optimal management of menopause-related issues. Although menopause education is included in some medical and specialty training curricula, physicians are not adequately trained to provide the standard of care to women transitioning to menopause.” Link Besides, only because EA women are younger nowadays doesn’t mean they will stay young forever. Concerning Give Well—I didn’t find anything about that topic there. But on an earlier research, I already wondered what about period poverty, as many girls miss classes or completely stop to attend school because they don’t have any products to deal with their period and I couldn’t find a single reviewed program about that topic. So perhaps women’s health is a bit of a blind spot in general?
As I say, in higher-income countries it’s probably a great project for an EA community member to take on with non-EA government funding (which is far more freely available if you are sufficiently trained in public health).
For sanitary product handout in low-income countries, I note this study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36185073/ which puts a number at $2300/DALY for menstrual cups. That’s great (it’s about 10x the cost-effectiveness bar the government of a higher-income country might use for its citizens), but it’s nowhere close to the EA funding bar which is about $80/DALY at the moment I think—about 50x as much.
EA money has a very high cost-effectiveness bar. Something not reaching it doesn’t mean that thing is not a good thing, it just means that we haven’t (yet) worked out how to get it cost-effective enough that we can save more lives by reallocting our grant pots towards it. If you can think of a way to deliver menopause education (or sanitary product handout) in a way that’s many times more cost-effective than the standard method, it might be worth doing some additional investigation?
NOVAH (domenstic violence prevention), Lafiyah Nigeria (contraceptive access), and FEM (contraceptive awareness) are the women-specific EA charities I know. There are also very good arguments that the Against Malaria Foundation has substantial benefit to women, as every child’s life saved is a mother who does not have to grieve.
I wouldn’t have written the post if the expected outcome of a woman going to her doctor with (peri)menopause syndroms is to get treatment.
The experience of many women also in higher-income countries is more like this:
Due to a lack of education, the woman doesn’t link her individual symptomes to menopause. Therefore she goes to her standard doctor.
Due to a lack of education, the standard doctor doesn’t link the symptomes to menopause and sends the woman to a specialist.
The specialist treats the symptome, but not the cause, or understands the link and there isn’t necessarily a good therapy existing due to a lack of studies and medical development.
The findings of a greek study point out the worldwide huge lacks in the healthcare system:
”Overall, training on menopause management is profoundly inadequate even nowadays. Menopause management requires theoretical education and clinical experience for the optimal management of menopause-related issues. Although menopause education is included in some medical and specialty training curricula, physicians are not adequately trained to provide the standard of care to women transitioning to menopause.” Link
Besides, only because EA women are younger nowadays doesn’t mean they will stay young forever.
Concerning Give Well—I didn’t find anything about that topic there. But on an earlier research, I already wondered what about period poverty, as many girls miss classes or completely stop to attend school because they don’t have any products to deal with their period and I couldn’t find a single reviewed program about that topic. So perhaps women’s health is a bit of a blind spot in general?
As I say, in higher-income countries it’s probably a great project for an EA community member to take on with non-EA government funding (which is far more freely available if you are sufficiently trained in public health).
For sanitary product handout in low-income countries, I note this study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36185073/ which puts a number at $2300/DALY for menstrual cups. That’s great (it’s about 10x the cost-effectiveness bar the government of a higher-income country might use for its citizens), but it’s nowhere close to the EA funding bar which is about $80/DALY at the moment I think—about 50x as much.
EA money has a very high cost-effectiveness bar. Something not reaching it doesn’t mean that thing is not a good thing, it just means that we haven’t (yet) worked out how to get it cost-effective enough that we can save more lives by reallocting our grant pots towards it. If you can think of a way to deliver menopause education (or sanitary product handout) in a way that’s many times more cost-effective than the standard method, it might be worth doing some additional investigation?
NOVAH (domenstic violence prevention), Lafiyah Nigeria (contraceptive access), and FEM (contraceptive awareness) are the women-specific EA charities I know. There are also very good arguments that the Against Malaria Foundation has substantial benefit to women, as every child’s life saved is a mother who does not have to grieve.