Hello Rulers! Alice Miranda Ollstein from POLITICO's health care team jumping in to share what I learned from shadowing the one and only Halle Berry as she lobbied Congress. Few subjects remain taboo in a Congress recently rocked by allegations of sex trafficking, outbreaks of physical violence, and heart-wrenching disclosures of mental health struggles. But when Hollywood star Halle Berry came to the Hill this week to talk about the gritty details of going through menopause, members and staff told her again and again that it was the first time they had ever discussed the issue in the Capitol’s hallowed halls. Advocates for menopause legislation who are joining forces with Berry were afraid, based on their own past experiences battling a toxic combination of sexism and ageism, that even mentioning the topic would cause people to “vomit and run out of the room.” Quite the opposite happened. A meeting on federal menopause research and policy Wednesday morning between Berry and dozens of female House members quickly turned into a cross between a group therapy session, a 1970s-style consciousness-raising meeting and a wartime strategy debate. Sitting around a long wooden table under some of the Capitol’s ornate chandeliers and colorful frescoes, the women lawmakers seemed eager to open up about their own experiences, and the mood swung wildly between raucous laughter and righteous anger. “I proudly wore my estrogen patch this morning,” announced Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.). “I wanted to kill my husband because he didn’t understand what I was going through,” quipped Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) “I had male doctors just tell me, ‘This too shall pass,’” Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), the only Republican present, recounted. “And I wanted to say: ‘Well you will too if you don’t help me.’” Berry’s candor that day about her own medical struggles — from pain during intimacy to the infuriating lack of reliable information about hormone therapy — seemed to give the members permission to unload and light a fire under their desire for legislative action. “My daughter is going through puberty so imagine my house right now,” Berry told the congresswomen to peals of laughter. “I’m getting hot flashes and raging and she’s doing the same thing in her 15-year-old way.” In another meeting later that afternoon with Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) and health care advocates, the Oscar winner quipped that it only takes her 30 seconds to convince men to care about menopause policy. “I get them to realize that the more sex they have, as they get older, the healthier they are, so they need us to have our stuff working too.” A bill Clarke introduced this week would require the National Institutes of Health to direct more of its billions in research dollars to focus on menopause. Another by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) would fund a national menopause awareness campaign, and other legislation is in the works to mandate more and better education on the topic in medical schools. Both women sit on the influential Energy and Commerce Committee and will push for a hearing there in 2024. Berry is also working with Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and others in the upper chamber on Senate companion bills they hope to roll out early next year, legislation they hope will be sponsored by every single woman in both parties in the upper chamber. And while this Congress has been historically unproductive, they’re hoping the issue’s bipartisan appeal and Berry’s star power can push them through. "I’ve seen firsthand how, far too often, the specific health issues women face are treated as secondary and taken less seriously — menopause is a prime example of that,” Murray told POLITICO, adding that she aims for the bill to tackle the “massive gap in research and education when it comes to women’s midlife health.” In an interview on Wednesday, Berry told Women Rule that her journey to Capitol Hill started when she fell into that “massive gap” at her doctor’s office in Beverly Hills. There, her menopause symptoms were misdiagnosed as the autoimmune condition Sjögren's syndrome — and she was only saved from undergoing inappropriate treatment by comparing notes with an older female relative. Later, when she had questions about the pros and cons of different interventions for easing menopause, her medical team responded with a shrug. “I found myself in the middle of this and being offered no answers and just sort of being told, ‘Figure it out,’” she said. “He did not have any information for me about whether hormones were good for me or bad for me or what kind I should take. He basically said, ‘Go Google it.’ And I thought, here is one of the best doctors in Beverly Hills, and if I can’t get good information, then I can only imagine that other people must be getting even less than that. It made me realize: there's definitely work to be done here.” The more Berry researched the issue, the more she saw that her experience was depressingly common. According to a 2021 study, 73 percent of women between ages 40 and 65 are experiencing menopause symptoms but not treating them, and 20 percent have symptoms for more than a year before being diagnosed by their doctor. Part of the issue is a lack of formal medical training. A recent study published in the journal of the North American Menopause Society found that only 31 percent of OB-GYN residency programs reported having any menopause curriculum at all. High-quality research is also woefully lacking — on all women’s health issues but on menopause in particular, leaving doctors as well as patients in the dark about what’s causing some of the most debilitating symptoms and how best to treat them. The information vacuum is taking an economic toll. A Mayo Clinic study released earlier this year found that women missing work due to menopause symptoms accounts for $1.8 billion in lost earnings every year — with Black and Latina women disproportionately impacted. Berry teamed up with the Hollywood law firm Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole, which specializes in social justice advocacy, and has made two trips to Capitol Hill so far to lobby for menopause legislation, with plans to return again early next year and as many times as it takes to get the bills signed into law. And even after that happens, she and the advocacy groups stressed, more work needs to be done to address barriers like inadequate insurance coverage of hormone therapy. These visits have completely changed Berry’s impression of Congress — for the better. “Honestly, like many Americans, I was pretty disgruntled with our government,” she said. “We often think that it’s just a bunch of people fighting and egos are flying. But when I came here and met with really good women and a few good men, I realized that a lot of them really are trying really hard to do good things.”
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