With 540,000 lost workdays and $3.5 billion in productivity loss tied to menopause, GreenShield says evidence and action must follow awareness in the workplace
Canadian women wait an average of two years before receiving effective treatment for menopause symptoms. Nearly 40 per cent don't know where to access care. And less than half have even raised the subject with a healthcare provider.
Those figures from GreenShield’s Health Outcomes Report sit at the centre of a new national research initiative that GreenShield, Women's Health Collective Canada (WHCC), and the Partnership for Women's Health Research (PWHR) are undertaking together - the Can-RISE study, which GreenShield says is Canada's first menopause study of its scope.
“We're really realizing the more we dig into it that women's health needs collaboration across sectors. You're not going to be able to solve this in a silo. A woman's body doesn't work in silos that way,” said Mandy Mail, executive vice president, head of marketing, corporate affairs and GreenShield Cares at GreenShield. “What makes the partnership and the study really powerful and interesting to us is that it's a bit of a trifecta. So, we have the lived experience, the research expertise, and the real-world care delivery insights all coming together.”
According to Mail, WHCC is assembling Canada's leading hospitals and health systems. PWHR brings research methodology and academic rigor while GreenShield contributes data from its hormonal health and women's mental health programs, filtered through an equity lens shaped by its nonprofit mandate and its work with racialized and marginalized women.
Inside GreenShield’s menopause study
The study's scope is deliberately wide, she said. Researchers will examine who is being excluded from care, what barriers block access, and how menopause ripples outward into workforce participation, economic output, and broader social outcomes.
But the partnership's ambition goes beyond just producing data as Mail noted the three organizations want to identify where the greatest opportunities exist to reshape care and close gaps and not simply document them.
"Our goal is to understand the gap well enough that we can actually help to close it," she said. "As a society, we've done such a good job starting to raise awareness about menopause, but the underlying care gaps are so substantial still. Awareness brings that conversation forward. What really needs to happen is evidence and action."
Why menopause matters for employers
The consequences extend past individual health too as recent GreenShield data found two-thirds of women between 35 and 55 report menopause symptoms affecting their job performance, yet only 13 per cent say their employer-sponsored benefits adequately cover hormonal health.
At the national level, the organization cites menopause-related symptoms as being associated with 540,000 lost workdays and $3.5 billion in annual productivity loss across Canada.
Mail frames this as a three-dimensional problem - a health issue, a workforce issue, and an equity issue - and underscored the debate should no longer centre on whether menopause warrants attention but on how to generate the evidence needed to improve outcomes.
“It’s not a niche issue,” she said. “I don't think the question anymore should be if menopause deserves attention. I think it's about how can we actually understand it well enough to improve the outcomes? That’s why we're doing the study.”
How menopause research could reshape plan design
Mail notes the study is built to test a wide set of hypotheses rather than confirm assumptions. Most existing health research has been conducted on men, and the complexity of women's bodies means the evidence base is thin. Mail noted the Can-RISE study will examine the health, social, and economic impacts across the full hormonal spectrum -perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause.
The research will also disaggregate the experience of menopause across equity-deserving populations. Mail notes that menopause manifests differently depending on ethnicity, and the barriers women face vary along racial, cultural, and socioeconomic lines.
Alongside the health dimensions, researchers will examine economic and workforce impacts, data Mail said employers need if they are going to see a return-on-investment case for covering hormonal health support.
A key objective for GreenShield is distinguishing between different types of gaps. Some may be rooted in education, where women simply lack information, while others may reflect the absence of viable solutions altogether.
Additionally, a growing category GreenShield has identified is navigation - women who know something is wrong but have no clear path to care. The organization has been working to consolidate its services into a single ecosystem to address that specific barrier.
GreenShield already operates what it calls Canada's first personalized hormonal health program - a nurse-led model that begins with diagnostic blood work and produces individualized care plans integrating pharmacy, mental health, coaching, and navigation services.
Early outcomes from that program feed directly into the study's framework: 88 per cent of participants who completed the program reported improvement in core menopause symptoms, 82 per cent reported improved mental wellness, and 78 per cent reported better physical health.
GreenShield's most recent health outcomes report found that every dollar invested in integrated women's health support returned two dollars, a ratio Mail argues should reframe the conversation for employers who still view hormonal health coverage as discretionary.
Turning menopause data into coverage
As to what the research will produce in practical terms, Mail sees the outputs reaching across plan design, clinical pathways, and policy. WHCC will focus on government advocacy while GreenShield will use the same evidence base to reshape how it packages coverage for employers and structures care delivery for members. The broader goal is to let the data dictate next steps rather than letting the partnership stop at producing findings.
"Employers do not need to choose between improving their employee well-being and creating value for their business. Supporting women's health delivers both. The benefit of having coverage and care together is we can look at both sides," she said.
