It’s time for menopause — and the conversation surrounding it — to get a modern makeover. And to give it a contemporary spin, Halle Berry, one of today’s leading voices behind the movement, had to respin the stigma, shame and misdiagnoses behind perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause — conditions that around 75 million women in the U.S. are experiencing, plus 6,000 more each day. The Oscar-winning actress and women’s menopausal health advocate offers a tech-lead solution: Respin Health, a community-based platform, backed by scientists, AI, medical professionals and other women on similar journeys.
“It’s a new spin on what this is and what this means to women’s health, what this means to a woman, what this time of life means, and what it can be all about — it definitely needs a re-spin,” Berry exclusively told WWD of her rebranded menopause-focused site, Respin Health.
Halle Berry for Respin Health
The 58-year-old said she had an “a-ha moment” in the middle of the COVID pandemic when she realized she was in perimenopause. That’s when she decided to rededicate Respin, a site that she launched in 2020 focused on general health, fitness and wellness for men and women, to Respin Health — an innovative resource for menopause and women’s mid-life health. “I thought, what deserves a respin more than menopause? Nothing. I mean, menopause was never spun in the first place.”
A majority of women agree, and want menopause conversations to reach its audience where they are — now the Gen X and incoming Millennial age groups. According to a 2023 Harris poll for Kindra, 1 in 3 women between 45 to 60 said they received misdiagnoses for menopause, and 60 percent of respondents found their doctor’s advice “unhelpful.”
They’re not alone. Berry herself was misdiagnosed at age 54. Her gynecologist believed she had herpes when she sought treatment for vaginal dryness, which is among more than 30 menopausal symptoms, including hot flashes, fatigue and irregular menstruation.
Berry was unprepared, partly because she had little knowledge of the menopausal body, but also the stigma surrounding it that led her to dismiss the idea. “I thought I was going to miss it, and I thought if I could miss it… if I could skip it, that would be the best thing I could do for myself, because I don’t want to be seen as old or I don’t want to be washed up,” she said. “I don’t want my industry to forget me and tell me I don’t have a place, that I don’t have worth, that I can’t continue to work and do the things I love… I was as afraid of it as anybody else, but because I had so little information about it, I thought I’m going to be a person that can skip it.”
Berry partnered with Ally Tam Tumasova, CEO, who has supported Maven Clinic, Bobbie Baby, Co-Star, and Food52, and an executive leadership team including AI-technologist Manasa Murthy, community builder Natalie Bruss and editorial director Allie Rose.
It’s an auspicious time for the new focus on menopause. The global menopause market is expected to reach more than $28 billion by 2028, while brands and retailers aren’t effectively reaching consumers, according to the Institute of Practitioners of Advertising. In a 2023 study, a survey found that only 7 percent of women 35 to 60 think brands are messaging “very well” to menopause concerns, 26 percent of the group found marketing efforts “uninspiring,” and 46 percent said brand narratives are “unreflective of their life or that of their friends.”
Respin Health aims to fill in the gaps missing in the market through a holistic approach, with alternatives to Hormone Replacement Therapy through personalized access to its experts and affinity pods that include women with similar lifestyles and symptoms. Plans are created by accessing 150 health data points to assess each unique menopause experience. The premium service is available through a paid monthly subscription.
Halle Berry for Respin Health
“We hook you up with a coach that can hold your hand, help you be accountable, help you come up with a plan, and you come up with your own plan,” Berry explained. “And our doctors and coaches help you stay accountable, just like what made Weight Watchers so successful, you had a whole community that you could talk to.”
Over the summer, Respin Health launched its invite-only Beta program, which found over an eight-week period that 90 percent of members had “directional improvement in symptoms” and 64 percent experienced “a clinically significant improvement in symptoms,” according to the brand.
AI tech will play a crucial role in the platform on the respin.health site, Berry added. “They need someone sort of like this always-on idea, and we can actually achieve this with AI — it’s always on, always having someone to be on the other side to answer your question. And not just answer a question, but get you state of the art answers that are backed in science and are medically proven.”
More than 1 million women in the United States experience menopause each year, according to the National Institute on Aging, yet medical communities lack robust understanding of the conditions, which typically affect women between the ages 45 and 55, and lasts for around seven years. That’s due to a lack of research and funding.
Berry has been on the advocacy circuit throughout 2024, standing alongside U.S. Senators at the Capitol to introduce the Advancing Menopause Care and Mid-Life Women’s Health Act, to help advance federal funding and research of menopause care.
