Finally, the NHS will talk about menopause, but will women really be heard?

I’ve lost count of the number of NHS Health Checks I’ve dutifully booked, turned up for and ticked my way through. Blood pressure? Fine. Cholesterol? OK. BMI? Let’s not go there. But despite my 50-year-old body showing all the usual signs of wear and tear, no one has ever asked about the chapter that can leave your hormones all over, your sleep in tatters and your confidence nowhere to be seen. Now, at least, menopause is being brought into the conversation.

In October 2025, the government announced plans to include menopause in routine NHS Health Checks in England for the first time nationally. Those plans were reinforced in the renewed Women’s Health Strategy published in April 2026, which said that from this year the standard NHS Health Check for adults aged 40 to 74 would include a question about menopause symptoms.

The NHS Health Check is generally offered every five years to eligible adults aged 40 to 74 and has traditionally focused heavily on cardiovascular and metabolic health, looking at risks including heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and type 2 diabetes.

The addition of a menopause question is intended to help women recognise possible symptoms and provide an easier route towards information, advice and support. The government says up to 5 million women could benefit.

It sounds like progress, doesn’t it? A sign that women’s health is finally being viewed as something more complicated than blood pressure, cholesterol and the inevitable conversation about BMI. But, and there is always a but, one rather important question remains.

A health check can only start a conversation if a woman actually gets through the surgery door.

Department of Health and Social Care figures show that 3,835,288 NHS Health Checks were offered in England during 2024–25, while 1,438,781 were delivered. That means the number delivered was equivalent to around 37.5% of the number offered.

That does not mean everyone who did not take up an offer simply couldn’t be bothered. Access to healthcare is more complicated than that. Work, caring responsibilities, appointment availability and wider health inequalities can all affect whether somebody makes it to a routine appointment.

That is why the reach of this initiative matters. Adding a menopause question to an NHS Health Check is welcome, but success can’t just be measured by whether the question exists. It also depends on who gets the opportunity to answer it.

There is plenty of evidence that women have been struggling to find the information they need. The government’s Women’s Health Strategy survey found that just 9% of respondents felt they had enough information about menopause. The wider survey also documented women feeling that their symptoms had not been taken seriously or had been dismissed by healthcare professionals.

Nine per cent. We live in an age where my watch can tell me how many hours I slept, my phone knows how many steps I have taken and an app can remind me when I last drank water. Yet women can still reach their 40s without knowing that sudden anxiety, brain fog, poor sleep or changing periods might be connected to perimenopause.

Too many women still find themselves muddling through night sweats, brain fog, changes in mood, anxiety, and poor sleep. We joke about hot flushes because hot flushes are easy to joke about. It is much harder to joke about forgetting words, losing confidence, lying awake at 3am or wondering why an ordinary Tuesday suddenly feels emotionally devastating.

Menopause and perimenopause are different for everyone. The NHS says menopause usually affects women between the ages of 45 and 55, although it can happen earlier. Perimenopause happens before menopause, as hormone levels change and periods become irregular.

Symptoms can also last considerably longer than many of us were ever led to believe. Current NHS guidance says menopause and perimenopause symptoms usually last between seven and nine years, sometimes longer.

According to the government’s announcement on bringing menopause into NHS Health Checks, around three-quarters of women experience menopause symptoms. Those symptoms extend well beyond the stereotypical hot flush. The NHS lists changes to periods, sleep problems, low mood, anxiety, difficulties with memory and concentration, palpitations, headaches, muscle and joint pain, changes to body shape, vaginal dryness, reduced libido, urinary symptoms, skin changes and hair thinning or hair loss.

For some women, symptoms barely interrupt everyday life. For others, they affect work, relationships, family life and their sense of who they are. Menopause may be a normal stage of life, but that does not mean every woman experiences it in the same way, or that difficult symptoms should be endured.

When I hit my mid-40s, I remember going to my GP complaining of anxiety and exhaustion. I half expected a blood test, perhaps a conversation about hormones. Instead, I was told it was probably stress and sent away with breathing tips.

That was it. I left the surgery feeling slightly crazy, as though I had made a fuss over nothing. A few months later, I found myself Googling symptoms at 2am, the sign of a woman trying to understand something nobody has properly explained to her.

Looking back, I keep returning to one question: what might have happened if somebody had just asked? Not diagnosed me from a checklist and not decided every problem in my life could be blamed on my ovaries. Just asked a few informed questions and considered perimenopause alongside everything else.

I would have understood what was happening to me sooner because understanding what is happening to your own body is half the battle.

The government’s Women’s Health Strategy survey gives us an interesting glimpse into where respondents were looking for health information. Some 74% cited family or friends, 71% Google searches and 69% other online search engines and blogs. By comparison, 59% cited a GP or another healthcare professional and 54% cited the NHS, including NHS 111 and the NHS website.

Which rather explains the 2am Googling.

Those figures do not tell us that women trust Google more than doctors, and shouldn’t be interpreted that way. But they do show just how big informal and online sources have become when people are trying to understand their health.

Women are already looking for answers. The question is whether they are finding reliable ones and whether the health service is meeting them early enough in that process. Increasingly, however, that conversation is also moving beyond the consulting room.

On World Menopause Day, 18 October 2026, a new initiative is taking the subject somewhere rather unexpected: the cinema.

My Cinema Clinic: Menopause is a 60-minute documentary accompanied by live panel discussions at participating cinemas. According to the organisers, the initial programme includes 15 UK cinema venues, with screenings beginning on World Menopause Day and continuing afterwards. A wider release is planned around International Women’s Day on 8 March 2027.

The organisers say the project is being delivered in partnership with Menopause Support and is endorsed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Its premise is simple but interesting. Instead of expecting women to seek out health information alone, the documentary combines specialist perspectives with personal stories and gives audiences an opportunity to continue the conversation through a panel Q&A.

The film explores menopause through mental health, relationships, confidence, work and everyday life, including experiences ranging from severe psychological symptoms to women who describe the transition in much more positive terms.

According to information supplied by the organisers, the premiere at Picturehouse Ritzy in Brixton is due to feature a panel including Professor Dame Lesley Regan, GP and women’s health specialist Dr Nighat Arif, filmmaker and author Kate Muir, Marjorie Grant and Dr Nicola Keay.

I rather like the thinking behind taking the subject outside its traditional setting. Health information does not have to exist exclusively in consulting rooms, leaflets or worthy PDFs. Sometimes the first useful conversation happens with friends over coffee. And so I believe it can happen in row G with a tub of popcorn.

Bringing people together challenges the idea that menopause is something women should manage privately. It also gives partners, family and colleagues an opportunity to understand an experience they may never have themselves.

A cinema screening can’t replace medical advice, of course. But if a woman recognises herself in somebody else’s story and realises that what she has been experiencing deserves a conversation with a healthcare professional, that has value.

Whether the conversation begins in a cinema or during an NHS Health Check, I keep coming back to the same question: what happens next?

Asking about menopause is the easy bit. What happens when a woman says she is struggling? Will the person carrying out her health check have enough knowledge to recognise symptoms that do not fit the stereotypical hot-flush narrative? Will women receive evidence-based information about the options available to them? Will they know where to go next, and will appropriate follow-up actually be available?

Those questions matter for women who already face barriers to healthcare. When the NHS Health Check policy was originally announced, health organisations welcomed the move while also stressing the importance of reaching women from diverse ethnic communities and socially deprived areas, alongside appropriate menopause training for staff delivering the checks.

That is the part worth watching. Because it is one thing to start a menopause conversation. It is another to build the knowledge, services and care behind it.

I welcome the NHS change, and I welcome the fact that menopause conversations are appearing beyond the health service too. After years in which menopause has too often been treated as something women should privately endure, both developments point towards something bigger.

Menopause belongs in ordinary healthcare and ordinary conversation. It belongs in discussions about women’s physical health, mental wellbeing, work, relationships and quality of life.

That is where the real change lies. Not in pretending one NHS question or one documentary can undo decades of poor understanding, but in making the subject ordinary enough that a woman does not have to spend months wondering whether she is imagining what is happening to her.

The real measure of success will not be how many NHS forms contain a menopause question or how many cinema seats are filled on World Menopause Day. It will be whether the woman who finally thinks, “Yes, that sounds like me,” knows what she can do next.

Those five-yearly health checks can become something more than blood pressure, cholesterol and the inevitable conversation about BMI. Maybe a cinema screening can become something more than a night out. Both can create an opportunity to ask a question: How are you feeling?

Have you ever been asked about perimenopause or menopause during a routine health appointment? Would you go to a cinema event to hear women and specialists talk openly about menopause, or, like me, did you end up piecing it together through Google, guesswork and rather too much late-night overthinking?

Editorial note: Information about My Cinema Clinic: Menopause was supplied to Saffron & Cyrus by the event organisers. Event details have been attributed accordingly. This article is editorial and is not sponsored.

Health information: This article shares personal experience and general information and is not a substitute for individual medical advice. If you are concerned about possible perimenopause or menopause symptoms, speak to a GP or another qualified healthcare professional.

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