Tip Sheets
First congressional hearing on menopause: Addressing ‘critical gap’ in care
September 17, 2026
Media Contact
Congress convened its first-ever hearing on menopause yesterday.
Claudia Fischbach-Teschl, a professor of engineering at Cornell University, helps lead the university’s Menopause Health Engineering Initiative. She says the hearing, while overdue, presents an opportunity to accelerate innovation in this space.
Claudia Fischbach-Teschl
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
“Yesterday’s hearing was a sorely needed discussion of the unmet health care needs of half the U.S. population.
“There is a critical gap in evidence-based care, costing billions in lost productivity and avoidable suffering. But it also presents a major opportunity: data scientists, AI experts, engineers, and others could accelerate innovation. For example, new imaging technologies paired with real-time, personalized biomarker monitoring processed by new algorithms could better tell a woman when to start and stop a hormone therapy to optimize her long-term health.
“Menopause is not a one-size-fits-all transition, and each woman’s health care trajectory is different. Menopause is not a simple change in hormone levels; it causes a fundamental shift in many biological processes, so that the importance of multidisciplinary approaches is impossible to underestimate.”
