Issue 18: FIFA kicks off women's health project | $10.1m for Visana Health clinic | Hanx launches new supplement range

+ more in your weekly FemTech and women's health innovation news

Aug 23, 2023

Hi! Welcome to issue 18 of FutureFemHealth, here to bring you your weekly news about women’s health innovation and FemTech (w/c 21 August 2023).

🌟 Coming up today we’ve got:

🏆 FIFA’s groundbreaking new women’s health project
📌 The new menopause education program
🔥 News from Hanx, Visana Health, Lindus Health and FemTech Lab

Got news to share from the world of FemTech and women’s health innovation? Let me know at anna@futurefemhealth.com

📦 FIFA kicks off new women’s health project

While I recover from England losing Sunday’s World Cup Final, it’s pretty clear that we’re entering a brilliant new age for women’s sport.

Popularity is soaring. Sunday’s ninth FIFA Football World Cup Final was watched by record numbers and there are now 100,000 more girls playing football in England than five years ago.

But, support for today’s athletes - and tomorrow’s - has to catch up now.

Among many issues:

training programs have never been created for female physiology or hormone cycles
coaching grounds still regularly lack sanitary facilities
taboos around sport and pregnancy, menopause and menstruation are barriers to participation.
clothing and footwear has been designed for men.

There’s a massive opportunity then, to find out more about women’s health and physiology and apply it to all of these areas.

By doing that, we can increase female sports performance, reduce injury (ACL injuries are devastating women’s teams - with 195 elite players suffering the injury the last 12 months), help women feel more comfortable taking part in sport and reduce teenage sport dropouts.

Enter, FIFA’s new groundbreaking project - the ‘women’s health, wellbeing and performance project’.

The project, announced last week, will include the development of a digital platform with information, education and resources on how to support, develop and prepare female players.

FIFA has had this project in the pipeline for two years. It’s recognised the lack of research and data dedicated to the women’s game and to the specific factors that need to be understood when working with female players.

Frankly, growth in the sport will stall unless the whole football ecosystem is better equipped with information and resources about women’s health.

As Dr Dawn Scott explains:

"For too long, we have applied research on white male players and used the evidence to train female players. This project is the starting point to educate and empower players, coaches, and support staff on how to optimally train women as women, ensuring health, wellbeing, and performance of female players."

We need female-specific knowledge and guidance

A key part of the project is to look at how the menstrual cycle impacts sports performance and players will be encouraged to track their own cycles. Research shared by FIFA suggests that 83-93% of female athletes experience menstrual cycle-related symptoms.

The project will also incorporate female-specific knowledge around sleep, nutrition, rest and recovery, and injury.

Guidance for female-specific requirements will be provided too, such as having toilet access, adequate sanitary facilities (e.g. bins and handwash), access to menstrual hygiene products, clothing to allow for potential leakage and access to well-fitting sports bras.

But this is not just about elite-level support. It’s aims extend much more broadly too.

Further goals include:

educating women in sport with more knowledge about women’s physiology
offering support structures to try and retain more female teenagers in sport and reduce dropout
devising tailored training that optimises what we know about hormonal changes
confronting the taboos that have limited women’s involvement in sport - incorporating support for athletes through pregnancy and return post-partum and through menopause for example.
better integrating women’s health into coaching curricula

The project brings on board 20 expert advisors including pelvic health physiotherapists, nutritionists and research specialists.

(Continue reading: Read more about the FIFA project here and the full report is available here).

🗞️ Headlines

Three menopause stories to start us off on today’s issue:

📌 The new national menopause education program

Academics at University College London (UCL) have teamed up with women’s health charities and women’s health experts to design and launch a national education and support programme in menopause.

Billed as the UK’s first such programme, it will include both a course and peer-support initiatives (much like the sorts of programmes parents-to-be go through with other parents in NCT classes / baby & bump classes). Trained healthcare professionals will deliver the course spread over several weeks, where women (and anyone going through menopause) will receive up-to-date and evidence-based menopause education.

There should be high demand for this one (data shared shows 90% of people have not been taught about the menopause in school), and I think the peer-support aspect plus the trusted brand of UCL combined with women’s health charities will make this popular.

(Continue reading: The Independent)

📌 Menopause is the next frontier for corporate benefits

While this headline is likely no surprise to readers of this newsletter, a new piece in the New York Times provides a good summary of where the US is right now on incorporating menopause benefits in the workplace, the legal landscape and why further research is needed.

Mentions included for Peppy and Maven too. In fact, Maven says its menopause product for employers, launched last October, has become its fastest-selling product.

(Continue reading: New York Times)

📌 Design workspaces for better menopause and menstruation support - new study

Nearly half (48%) of UK workplaces need more thought given to how the space is designed for those going through menstruation and menopause, a new poll has suggested.

The OnePoll survey of 2,000 adults, commissioned by inclusive design agency Motionspot, looked at how the workspace design can support people experiencing pain and discomfort from their symptoms.

Respondents called out dimly lit spaces, a place to lie down, fresh air, comfortable seating, temperature-controlled spaces as some of the measures that would help - and importantly encourage them to go into the office more often.

(Continue reading: The Independent)

🌟 More news from this week

📌 UK: Condom start-up Hanx expands supplement range Vegan condom company Hanx has announced new pregnancy support and menopause support supplements, joining their existing libido lift supplement which launched in late 2022. Development has been led by co-founder Dr Sarah Welsh who is a gynaecology and obstetrics doctor. (Continue reading: Hanx on LinkedIn)

📌 USA: Women’s health clinic Visana Health secures $10.1M seed round. Visana bills itself as a virtual-first clinic that provides comprehensive, in-depth care for all phases of a woman’s life (rather than focusing on just fertility or menopause, for example), via both payers and employers. (Continue reading: MedCityNews)

📌 UK: Clinical trials start-up Lindus Health secures $18m. London-based Lindus Health promises to revolutionise the clinical trial process - running trials three times faster than usual and offering an end-to-end service. Could this help bring women’s health solutions to the market sooner? A menopause trial with Bonafide Health is already underway. (Continue reading: TechCrunch)

📌 UK: FemTech Lab selects next accelerator cohort The 12-week FemTech Lab accelerator begins on 1 September. Co-Founder & CEO Karina Vazirova has shared news that the successful applicants have now been finalised. Can’t wait to see who is in! (Continue reading: Karina Vazirova on LinkedIn)

📌 Four new FemTech innovations demystifying and normalising menstruation. Find out how menstrual cycle tracking apps, smart menstrual products, infrared apparel and telemedicine are helping overcome menstrual challenges. (Continue reading: MedCity News)

📌 Clothing, chemicals, fertility and health: are your workout clothes causing you harm? A new opinion piece has summarised the research into how chemicals in clothing, particularly workout clothing, can disrupt our hormones and potentially affect our health and fertility. (Continue reading: CNN)

Sidenote: We are already seeing FemTech brands emerging in the chemical-free, health-focused clothing space. One such start-up I’ve noticed is Oya FemTech apparel, which is designed as sportswear that prevents vaginal infections and promotes itself as BPA, PFA, and PFOA-Free.

📌 How YouTube is tackling medical misinformation Frustrated by the garbage among the gold on YouTube, particularly when it comes to health? YouTube has shared plans for new medical misinformation policies, including the removal of cancer misinformation. (Continue reading: YouTube blog)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 A painkiller can make the morning-after pill more effective New study from Hong Kong showed significantly less pregnancies using this combo, versus using the pill on its own. (Continue reading: Time Magazine)

📌 Tracking menopause symptoms can give women more control over their health Women who monitored symptoms every day reported lower negative emotions, physical symptoms and loneliness at the end of a two-week period. The research was led by Deborah Lancastle, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of South Wales and funded by Health and Her (although Her and Health products weren’t used in the study!) (Continue reading: The Conversation)

📌 Period tracking app Clue has contributed to new COVID-19 study De-identified Clue user data was used to analyse the impact of COVID-19 infections and vaccinations on the menstrual cycle. (Continue reading: FemTech World)

📄 Govt & policy news

📌 USA: New maternal health research centres set up by National Institutes of Health (NIH) The US has a well-documented poor record for maternal deaths. $24m of first-year funding has now been awarded by NIH in a bid to improve this. (Continue reading: Daily Mail)

That’s all for this week!

Do you know someone who might like to read this issue? It would mean a lot if you could forward on this post so that more people can discover my work:

See you next time,

Anna