A D.C.-based nonprofit is bringing hormone replacement therapy, perimenopause, and metabolic health out of whispered conversations and into a ballroom at The Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner. The Next ChaptHER Foundation will host its Ladies Who Power Lunch on October 2, pairing a sit-down meal with a panel and town hall discussion offering evidence-based education on questions about women's health.
The event, reported by DC News Now, will gather up to 250 people to hear from three clinicians: functional medicine nurse practitioner Nicki Rivera, board-certified OB/GYN Dr. Jila Senemar, and nurse practitioner Cynthia Thurlow, according to the foundation's event page. Topics on the agenda include hormone replacement therapy, perimenopause, peptides, nutrition, metabolic health, and longevity — subjects the foundation says are often considered taboo in conversations about women's health, per the same event listing.
From Friend Group to Foundation
The Next ChaptHER Foundation didn't start as a formal nonprofit at all. It began as a gathering of friends who eventually built out networking lunches for women navigating life transitions, before formalizing into a D.C.-based 501(c)(3) run by co-founders Alicia McKenzie, Hilary Phelps, Lindsay Gill, and Anina Belle Giannini, according to the organization's own event page. This year the foundation also launched a membership program offering smaller, more intentional gatherings, including branding sessions with headshots and warm-up poker, available in both in-person and virtual formats.
Panelist Cynthia Thurlow brings a national platform to the Tysons Corner stage. She has delivered TEDx talks on women's health that have drawn more than 15 million views, and in April she published *The Menopause Gut*, which lays out how declining estrogen during perimenopause disrupts the gut microbiome and metabolic flexibility, according to her author site.
A National Reckoning Reaches the Suburbs
The timing isn't incidental. This month, the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging held the first-ever congressional hearing dedicated specifically to menopause, focusing on closing the nation's menopause care gap, improving physician training, and expanding federal research funding, as reported by The 19th News. That hearing follows a broader legislative push: the federal Advancing Menopause Care and Mid-Life Women's Health Act, re-introduced this year, proposes authorizing $275 million over five years, including $25 million annually for National Institutes of Health research into midlife women's health, according to the office of U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke.
The push traces back further still. In March 2024, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14120, directing federal agencies to prioritize midlife women's health and committing $200 million through the NIH to study how perimenopause and menopause affect cardiovascular, brain, and bone health, per the Federal Register. And just this month, the International Organization for Standardization published ISO 45010, the first global workplace standard offering employers practical guidance for supporting staff through perimenopause and menopause, Forbes reports.
The Price of Staying Silent
The financial stakes behind these policy moves are steep. Mayo Clinic estimates cited by AARP put the annual cost of untreated menopausal symptoms at roughly $1.8 billion in lost employer productivity and up to $26.6 billion in annual direct medical expenses. Workplace productivity is another part of the conversation about the costs associated with menopause symptoms.
Part of the reason women are turning to panels like the one at Tysons Corner instead of their own physicians comes down to training gaps. Federal legislative findings cited by Rep. Clarke's office describe gaps in menopause curricula and physician preparedness. The Tysons Corner event offers direct, evidence-based education about midlife women's health.
The Ladies Who Power Lunch contributes to the broader conversation about midlife women's health. Hoodline previously reported that Illinois allows menopause coursework to count toward an existing implicit-bias training requirement, part of a broader national conversation about midlife women's health. Whether events like this one can close the gap between rising public interest and the slower pace of healthcare coverage, employer policy, and medical school curricula remains an open question.
