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Melinda French Gates is speaking out about the challenges of recognizing perimenopause, saying she didn’t receive the proper diagnosis and treatment until after seeing three different doctors.
She shared her experience with journalist Norah O’Donnell’s new podcast “Healthful,” which will be released on Wednesday.
French Gates, now 61, said she was in her early 40s when she began experiencing menopause symptoms, noting that she “kind of couldn’t believe it,” as reported by CBS News.
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Later, the philanthropist and businesswoman would learn that many OB-GYNs receive little formal training in menopause care, which she says underscores a broader gap in women’s healthcare.
French Gates shared that she was lucky enough to know the signs, thanks to input from older friends.
“But it was kind of unbelievable to me that, even in this, you know, unbelievably privileged situation I’m in, where I feel like I can get some of the best healthcare, it took me three doctors to really diagnose what I was going through and to get the right treatments for where I was,” she said during the interview.
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“It wasn’t because anybody was doing the wrong thing. It’s because of what I now know, which is, only one-third of OB-GYNs in this country are trained in menopause.”
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Supporting her claim, a national survey published in the journal Menopause in 2023 found that only about one-third of U.S. obstetrics and gynecology residency programs include a formal menopause curriculum.
More recently, a 2024 study found that OB-GYN, family medicine and internal medicine residents have low knowledge and low confidence in treating menopausal symptoms.
In a separate 2026 Kansas study, more than half of residents reported receiving fewer than five hours of menopause education — and the majority did not believe that residency fully prepared them to treat menopausal patients independently.
In a national survey of 2,000 women, only 25% said their healthcare provider had adequately informed them about perimenopause.
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Additional training in this area could help, researchers claim, as knowledge scores increased from 61% to 79% among those who received a structured curriculum.
About 1.3 million U.S. women reach menopause each year, according to The Menopause Society. Most begin perimenopause in their 40s, although it can start earlier.
As perimenopause causes hormone levels to fluctuate, women can experience a range of symptoms. Some of the most common include irregular periods, hot flashes, night sweats, sleep disturbances, mood changes, vaginal dryness, brain fog and joint pain as hormone levels begin to fluctuate, according to Mayo Clinic.
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