Menopause Medical Education Statistics: 2026 Evidence and Standards Audit

They show that formal menopause curricula and dedicated clinical exposure were reported by a minority of responding U.S. OB/GYN residency programs, that residents in a 2017 multispecialty sample reported low preparedness, and that the intervention studies summarized here produced substantial short-term gains in knowledge or confidence. They do not show a national average number of training hours, a current U.S. medical-school percentage, or an effect on patient outcomes.

The evidence base is small, uneven, and easy to misread. The major U.S. curriculum surveys used voluntary responses. Their response rates ranged from 26.0% to 68.3%. The quantitative studies cited most often on this page focus heavily on physicians and residents in obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine, and internal medicine. Several headline figures come from data collected years before publication.

That does not make the numbers useless. It makes the caveats part of the number.

What this evidence shows:

• Formal menopause curricula and dedicated clinical exposure were reported by a minority of responding U.S. OB/GYN residency programs in 2022.
• Residents across three specialties reported low self-rated preparedness; 20.3% of those answering the lecture item reported no menopause lectures during residency.
• Eighty-three of 99 responding program directors said more educational resources were needed, and 92.9% strongly supported nationwide access to a standardized curriculum.
• The three intervention reports summarized here found substantial short-term improvements in learner knowledge, comfort, confidence, or preparedness.
• Current standards documents do not all treat menopause the same way: some omit the exact term, some use it in examples, and some name it as exam content.

What this evidence does not show:

• A national average number of menopause-training hours for U.S. doctors.
• The percentage of all practicing U.S. physicians who are adequately trained.
• A current, nationally representative U.S. medical-school curriculum percentage.
• Any change in patient outcomes attributable to menopause education.
• A clean national trend between the 2013 resident survey and the 2022 program-director survey.
• What any individual clinician knows or how well that clinician practices.

We did not identify a current, nationally representative U.S. source establishing how many hours of menopause education doctors receive. The verified hours figures in the included evidence describe one school, one residency program, or one educational intervention. Those are documented doses, not national averages, and averaging them would manufacture a statistic that no dataset supports.

One claim we audited is that doctors receive roughly one hour of menopause education, one lecture, or one to two hours total. We looked for a primary U.S. source behind it and did not find one.

That does not prove that every version of the claim is false. It means this audit did not locate a current, nationally representative U.S. dataset that would let a writer publish the claim as an established statistic.

What we can document is every specific educational dose used in the included sources.

The 2021 UK Freedom of Information compilation records that seven UK universities reported a one-hour menopause lecture. That is the nearest verified “one hour” figure identified in the source set used for this audit.

We cannot establish a citation chain from that document to the national U.S. claim, and we are not asserting one. The FOI result describes seven UK universities reporting their own provision in 2020–21. It does not describe all UK schools, all doctors, U.S. physicians, or present-day training.

The citation-safe conclusion is simple: the one-hour national U.S. statistic was not established by the evidence identified in this audit.

In a survey fielded in 2022, 31.3% of the 99 responding U.S. OB/GYN residency program directors reported a formal menopause curriculum— 31 programs. Among all responding programs, 29.3% reported dedicated menopause-clinic time for trainees, and 83 of 99 directors agreed or strongly agreed that their programs needed more menopause educational resources. The figures describe responding programs in 2022 and cannot be generalized to every U.S. program or to other specialties.

Allen and colleagues surveyed 145 U.S. OB/GYN residency program directors with a 15-question instrument. Ninety-nine completed it, a 68.3% response rate. It is a direct current U.S. program-level curriculum survey identified in this audit.

The denominator shift inside this table matters. Among the 31 programs reporting a curriculum, 74.2% reported dedicated or high-volume menopause clinics. Across all 99 responding programs, 29.3% reported dedicated menopause-clinic time for trainees. Those are related measures, not interchangeable ones.

In a survey published in 2013, 20.8% of responding U.S. OB/GYN residents said their program had a formal menopause curriculum and 16.3% reported a defined menopause clinic. It is useful historical evidence, but it asked residents rather than program directors and used a different forwarding process, so it is not a directly comparable predecessor to the 2022 survey.

Christianson and colleagues contacted 258 OB/GYN residency program directors and asked them to forward a survey to residents. Seventy-nine directors — 30.6% — confirmed forwarding it. A total of 1,799 people received the survey and 510 completed it, a 28.3% response rate.

Residents reported wanting more instruction across every clinical domain the survey asked about:

The same survey asked how residents preferred to learn. Supervised clinics led at 53.2%, followed by case presentations at 22.2%, formal lectures at 21.3%, small groups at 14.7%, web-based learning at 7.8%, and independent reading at 5.2%. These are learning preferences; they should not be assumed to be mutually exclusive unless the instrument says so.

Do not write that menopause curricula rose from 20.8% to 31.3%. The two surveys did not measure the same respondent population.

These are different respondent groups, different recruitment processes, different denominators, and different data years. A program director can report whether a formal curriculum exists. A resident can report whether they experienced or recognized one. The 10.5-percentage-point difference is not a measured national change.

In a survey fielded from January through July 2017 across 20 U.S. residency programs in family medicine, internal medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology, 12 of 177 respondents — 6.8% — reported feeling adequately prepared to manage menopause. In the same survey, 36 of 177 — 20.3% — reported receiving no menopause lectures during residency, while 165 of 176 — 93.8% — rated menopause training as important or very important.

Kling and colleagues emailed 703 residents. One hundred eighty-three responded, a 26.0% response rate. That response rate is a real limitation, not a footnote to hide.

A source-level arithmetic note: dividing the printed count of 71 by 183 rounds to 38.8%, while the published abstract reports 38.7%. We preserve the published percentage and disclose the mismatch rather than silently changing it.

Two denominators are also in play. The preparedness and lecture items were answered by 177 respondents. The clinical-scenario results are printed against 183. The 6.8% figure has a denominator of 177, not 183.

We did not identify a current, nationally representative percentage for U.S. medical schools. The school-level national compilation located was a 2021 UK Freedom of Information project in which the publisher reported that 41% of the schools included in its calculation did not have mandatory menopause teaching. That is gray evidence from another country describing 2020–21 provision, and it cannot answer the current U.S. question.

In November 2020, Menopause Support sent a Freedom of Information request to 33 UK medical schools. The results were published in May 2021. The publisher excluded one course from its calculation and reported that 41% did not have mandatory menopause education.

Using the publisher’s denominator of 32, the reported percentage implies the following counts:

This is original evidence-gathering. It is also not a peer-reviewed study. It was conducted by an advocacy organization, records what schools reported about themselves, and does not provide a standardized audit of delivered teaching. It should be described as a Freedom of Information compilation, never as a U.S. statistic and never as current 2026 UK provision.

This audit did not identify a national U.S. dataset counting accredited medical schools with required menopause teaching or measuring the hours each school delivers. That is an evidence gap, not permission to replace the missing number with the UK percentage or a repeated one-hour claim.

The documents do not give one uniform answer. As of August 1, 2026, the exact word “menopause” was absent from the current ACGME program requirements audited for obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine, and internal medicine, and from the OB/GYN Milestones. It appeared in two examples in the OB/GYN Milestones Supplemental Guide, which says its examples are not specific requirements. A verified copy of the 2020 CREOG educational objectives contains a dedicated “Perimenopause and Menopause” section. Current ABIM internal-medicine and endocrinology blueprints name menopause-related content explicitly.

We retrieved the documents from their issuing organizations and searched for the character string “menopaus”so that “menopause,” “menopausal,” and “postmenopausal” would not be missed, and manually reviewed every located use in context.

An absent word proves little by itself. The useful comparison is what the same document does name.

The correction that keeps this finding honest is just as important as the absence itself. The same requirements contain broad clauses that can encompass menopause. Section 4.6.a requires knowledge of the core and subspecialty content of obstetrics and gynecology and topics related to women’s health care. Section 4.11.k.1 requires educational activities covering all aspects of obstetrics and gynecology. The document also requires ambulatory gynecology experience.

So the precise statement is not “ACGME does not require menopause education.” It is this:

That is a narrower claim. It is also the one the documents support.

The Supplemental Guide uses the exact word “menopause” in two examples:

The guide also includes menopause-related scenarios using terms such as “postmenopausal” and “vasomotor.” Those examples show that the topic is contemplated. They do not convert the examples into program requirements.

The document has a dedicated Family Planning patient-care subcompetency. No separately named menopause subcompetency was located. That is an HRT Index observation about the document’s structure, not a statement of ACGME policy intent.

A verified copy of the 12th edition of the CREOG Educational Objectives, published in 2020, contains a dedicated section titled “Perimenopause and Menopause.” The objectives cover definitions and physiology, counseling about natural and induced menopause, metabolic evaluation, and management including lifestyle and pharmacologic interventions.

That document also says it should not be viewed as a body of rigid rules and serves as guidance for residency curriculum development.

The edition limit matters. We verified the 12th-edition text. We did not independently verify the text of a later edition for this audit, so we do not represent the 2020 wording or section numbering as current beyond that verified edition.

Source: CREOG Educational Objectives: Core Curriculum in Obstetrics and Gynecology, 12th ed. (2020), developed by the Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology and copyrighted by ACOG.

The January 2026 Internal Medicine Certification Examination Blueprint assigns 3% of a typical exam to obstetrics and gynecology. Within that category, “Menopause — management, risks, and benefits of therapy” is listed as its own topic with a target of under 2% of the exam.

The Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism Certification Blueprint assigns 7% to Female Reproduction and lists “Perimenopause and menopause” at under 2%. The corresponding April 2026 MOC Blueprint assigns 5% to Female Reproduction and also lists the topic at under 2%.

An exam blueprint describes assessment content. It does not report educational time, prove that a question will appear on every exam, or establish how a residency program teaches the topic.

Yes. The General Medical Council’s October 2025 Medical Licensing Assessment content map lists “Menopause/perimenopause” as both a patient presentation and a condition, and lists “Genitourinary syndrome of menopause” as a separate condition. The map applies to MLA exams and assessments taken from September 2026 onward. It is an assessment framework, not a measure of teaching hours.

The GMC says the content map forms the basis of the Applied Knowledge Test and the Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment. It also states that UK medical students must pass the MLA and meet their university’s academic requirements to graduate.

The clean comparison is not “the U.S. ignores menopause and the UK requires it.” The documents do different jobs. The accurate statement is:

A named entry in a licensing or certification blueprint does not tell us how many hours a school devotes to it or how well it is taught. Requirement, assessment, curriculum design, and delivered education are four different things.

The three intervention reports summarized here found improvements in short-term learner knowledge, comfort, confidence, or preparedness. None established improved patient outcomes. The studies used different learners, curricula, instruments, and settings, so their score changes should not be pooled or averaged.

The two studies reporting percentage-correct pre/post scores found increases of 21.4 and 18.3 percentage points. Those values are useful side by side, but the tests and cohorts were different. There is no defensible pooled effect estimate.

The Clark article says that 21 postprogram respondents represented 95% who were likely to use the new information in patient care, while the surrounding passage reports 23 postprogram survey respondents. Twenty-one of 23 is 91.3%.

That could reflect a different denominator for the item or a reporting inconsistency. The public dataset preserves the article’s printed figure and flags the mismatch rather than silently recalculating it.

No study identified in this audit demonstrates that menopause education improves patient outcomes. Better test scores and greater confidence are educational outcomes. They are not the same as observed clinical performance, treatment quality, symptom improvement, or patient safety.

It is small and narrowly concentrated. A 2026 author-deposited scoping-review dataset reports that searches through May 2025 identified 5,034 records and included 14 studies — nine educational interventions and five studies of curricular provision, with only one assessing longer-term retention. An earlier peer-reviewed review whose searches ended in April–May 2021 included 12 empirical studies, all concerning doctor education.

The two included-study counts are not a time series. The reviews used different search dates and may differ in eligibility, scope, and classification. They should not be summarized as “the field grew from 12 to 14 studies.”

What they do show is concentration. The literature is weighted toward U.S. physician education and postgraduate training. Evidence remains limited for:

• Undergraduate medical education, especially current national U.S. curriculum provision.
• Nursing, pharmacy, psychology, physiotherapy, and other health professions.
• Long-term knowledge retention.
• Observed clinical performance.
• Patient outcomes.
• Nationally representative curriculum-hour estimates.

Keep the denominator, respondent type, specialties, and data year attached to the number. Removing any one of those can turn a defensible statistic into a different claim.

One number we deliberately did not calculate is an average across the documented hours examples. The sources measure different programs and interventions. Combining them would produce clean arithmetic and a meaningless statistic.

Federal agencies and legislators took specific menopause-education actions in 2026. NIH announced a $2.5 million curriculum challenge that remained marked “Coming Soon” at the verification date. Two federal bills proposed medical-education and health-professional-training provisions. California enacted an enhanced continuing-education credit mechanism that begins July 1, 2027. The federal bills are proposals; the California provision is law.

The National Institutes of Health announced the COMpetency in Menopause & Integrated Therapy (COMMIT) Challenge to identify, amplify, and reward curricula addressing the menopausal transition, including menopause hormone therapy, within U.S. health-education programs.

The total NIH prize purse is $2.5 million. As of August 1, 2026, NIH listed the challenge as Coming Soon, with the submission timeline still to be announced.

Source: National Institutes of Health, COMMIT Challenge. Page last reviewed July 20, 2026; status verified August 1, 2026.

On June 11, 2026, Representative Valerie Foushee introduced H.R. 9273. The Congressional Record describes it as a bill directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to require public institutions of higher education receiving grants under the Medical Student Education program to include menopause-related training in their medical-school curricula. It was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Two things belong in every description: it is a proposal, not law, and its mechanism is tied to a specific federal grant program rather than all U.S. medical schools.

Sources: Congressional Record, June 11, 2026; Representative Valerie Foushee’s sponsored-legislation record. Verified August 1, 2026.

H.R. 9090 was introduced on June 2, 2026and referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Section 5 would authorize grants to develop, establish, or expand training programs — including accredited residency programs, fellowships, and related clinical training — for physicians, dentists, registered nurses, advanced practice registered nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, other healthcare providers, students, and trainees.

It would also authorize expanded training opportunities, including continuing medical education. It remains a proposal.

Source: H.R. 9090 introduced text, U.S. Government Publishing Office. Verified August 1, 2026.

California’s SB 164 became Chapter 27 on June 29, 2026. Beginning July 1, 2027, a qualifying physician or osteopathic physician who completes continuing medical education in perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopausal care will receive two hours of credit for each hour completed, up to eight course hours.

The law also creates enhanced-credit provisions for qualifying nurse practitioners and physician assistants. It does not require every covered clinician to take menopause coursework. It changes how qualifying completed coursework is credited. This is the only item on this page that is enacted law rather than a proposal.

We assembled menopause-specific educational metrics from peer-reviewed primary studies, review datasets, official standards documents, board blueprints, official government records, and clearly labeled gray evidence. We coded each result by population, training stage, geography, data period, study design, and denominator. We kept unlike populations separate and did not calculate a national training-hours average.

1. Official issuing-body and government material.
2. Peer-reviewed original research.
3. Peer-reviewed reviews and author-deposited review datasets.
4. Original gray evidence with a visible method and source trail.
5. Secondary material used for discovery or context, not as the sole support for a consequential claim.

For every quantitative result, we recorded:

• Data period separately from publication year.
• Country or geography.
• Educational stage.
• Specialty or profession.
• Study design.
• Sample frame or target population.
• Analysis denominator.
• Numerator when verifiable.
• Reported percentage, score, count, dose, or status.
• Primary source.
• The limitation required to read the result correctly.
• Verification date and publication status.

Undergraduate medical education, graduate medical education, and continuing professional education are kept apart. Results from different surveys are not pooled or plotted as a common trend because their respondents, instruments, recruitment processes, data years, and denominators differ.

We retrieved the selected current ACGME and ABIM documents from the issuing organizations, searched for the character string “menopaus” so that “menopause,” “menopausal,” and “postmenopausal” would not be missed, and manually reviewed every located use in context.

Exact-word absence is reported only as a document-language finding. It does not establish that a program does not teach menopause or that broader clauses cannot encompass it. To make the ACGME absence interpretable, we recorded both the topics the document names separately and the broader clauses that could cover menopause.

• We did not calculate a national average number of menopause-training hours because the available hours figures describe individual schools, curricula, or interventions.
• We did not convert 31 of 99 responding program directors into a percentage of every U.S. residency program.
• We did not treat the 2013 and 2022 survey results as a trend.
• We did not pool intervention score changes from different instruments.

Where printed counts and percentages do not reconcile, we preserve the source’s reported figure and disclose the mismatch rather than silently correcting it. Two flags appear in this report:

• Kling: 71 of 183 rounds to 38.8%, while the abstract reports 38.7%.
• Clark: 21 respondents reported as 95% in a passage describing 23 postprogram survey respondents.

This was a structured evidence and standards audit. It was not a preregistered systematic review or a meta-analysis.

The document audit can be rerun from the source list:

1. Open the current ACGME Program Requirements for Obstetrics and Gynecology and record the effective date.
2. Search for “menopaus”rather than only “menopause” so inflected terms are not missed.
3. Repeat for the current Family Medicine and Internal Medicine program requirements.
4. Repeat for the OB/GYN Milestones and Supplemental Guide, recording whether each hit is a requirement, milestone, or example.
5. Review the current ABIM Internal Medicine and Endocrinology certification and MOC blueprints.
6. Review the applicable GMC MLA content map and record its effective assessment date.
7. Review the exact CREOG edition available to you and record the edition rather than assuming wording carried forward.
8. Preserve the PDFs or version identifiers and the date searched.

A changed result means the document changed or a different version was used. That is why every row carries a version and verification date.

These numbers do not describe every medical school, residency program, clinician, or health profession. Several primary studies relied on voluntary survey responses and may be affected by nonresponse and self-selection. The Kling survey response rate was 26.0%; the Christianson resident survey response rate was 28.3%; and the Allen program-director survey response rate was 68.3%. The direction of nonresponse bias is unknown.

The samples are limited. Kling covered 20 programs. Allen reports 99 responses from 145 directors surveyed. The intervention reports summarized here covered one residency program, six residency programs, and a selected Oregon continuing-education cohort.

The evidence is concentrated in physician education and in a limited set of specialties. Evidence concerning undergraduate U.S. medical education, nonphysician professions, long-term retention, observed clinical performance, and patient outcomes remains limited.

Percentages from different studies are not repeated measurements of one national population. The 2013 resident survey and the 2022 program-director survey used different respondents and methods. They should not be presented as a trend.

The UK medical-school data are school-reported gray evidence published in 2021 by an advocacy organization. They are included as a clearly labeled historical international data point, not as evidence about current U.S. or current UK provision.

The standards review is an exact-term and contextual document audit. The absence of the word “menopause” does not prove that menopause teaching is absent, prohibited, or excluded from broader competencies. Its presence in a blueprint does not establish teaching hours or guarantee a question on every exam.

The verified CREOG text is from the 12th edition published in 2020. This report does not represent that wording as the text of a later edition.

The intervention studies measured short-term knowledge, confidence, comfort, preparedness, or satisfaction. None establishes improved patient outcomes.

Standards, challenge statuses, legislation, and official documents can change after the verification date. The visible date on this report should be updated only after the affected sources are rechecked.

Finally, nothing on this page describes the competence of an individual clinician. Many clinicians pursue education beyond what their medical school or residency formally required. These findings concern published evidence and training structures, not the knowledge of any particular person.

This page is educational research, not medical advice.Questions about personal care belong with a licensed clinician who knows the patient’s history.

Original studies

• Allen JT, Laks S, Zahler-Miller C, et al. Needs assessment of menopause education in United States obstetrics and gynecology residency training programs. Menopause. 2023;30(10):1002–1005.
• Kling JM, MacLaughlin KL, Schnatz PF, et al. Menopause management knowledge in postgraduate family medicine, internal medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology residents: a cross-sectional survey. Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2019;94(2):242–253.
• Christianson MS, Ducie JA, Altman K, Khafagy AM, Shen W. Menopause education: needs assessment of American obstetrics and gynecology residents. Menopause. 2013;20(11):1120–1125.
• Christianson MS, Washington CI, Stewart KI, Shen W. Effectiveness of a 2-year menopause medicine curriculum for obstetrics and gynecology residents. Menopause. 2016;23(3):275–279.
• Vesco KK, Brooks NB, Francisco MC, et al. Resident training to optimize patient-focused menopause management: a multispecialty menopause curriculum to enhance knowledge and preparedness. Menopause. 2024;31:93–100.
• Clark AL, Brandis L, Hyde S, et al. Tailoring menopause education to the needs of primary care clinicians: the Oregon menopause ECHO experience. Menopause. Published online April 7, 2026.

Reviews and evidence datasets

• Keye S, et al. Mapping menopause education for healthcare professionals: a scoping review. Author-deposited dataset.
• Macpherson B, Quinton N. Menopause and healthcare professional education: a scoping review. Maturitas. 2022.

Official standards, blueprints, and policy records

• ACGME Program Requirements for Graduate Medical Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology, effective July 1, 2026
• ACGME Program Requirements for Graduate Medical Education in Family Medicine, 2026
• ACGME Program Requirements for Graduate Medical Education in Internal Medicine, 2026
• ACGME Obstetrics and Gynecology Milestones
• ACGME Obstetrics and Gynecology Milestones Supplemental Guide
• CREOG Educational Objectives: Core Curriculum in Obstetrics and Gynecology, 12th ed. (2020), Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology / ACOG.
• ABIM Internal Medicine Certification Examination Blueprint, January 2026
• ABIM Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism Certification Examination Blueprint
• ABIM Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism MOC Blueprint, April 2026
• General Medical Council, MLA content map, published October 2025
• National Institutes of Health, COMpetency in Menopause & Integrated Therapy Challenge
• Congressional Record entry for H.R. 9273, June 11, 2026
• H.R. 9090 introduced text, U.S. Government Publishing Office
• California SB 164, Chapter 27

Gray evidence

• Menopause Support. Freedom of Information survey of UK medical schools. Request sent November 2, 2020; results published May 13, 2021.