As the Democrat in charge of her party’s intensive effort to win the Senate majority, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has a challenging job.
But on Thursday, Ms. Gillibrand plans to use her platform to spotlight an issue that has been absent from the campaign trail and little discussed in Washington, convening the first-ever congressional hearing on menopause.
It is an effort to focus on what Ms. Gillibrand calls an urgent issue that has gone ignored and unmentioned in the searing debates over the Trump administration’s scientific research cuts and the health care affordability issues that Democrats are hoping will help them win control of Congress in November.
In a recent interview, Ms. Gillibrand said she planned to use the hearing to make the case for investing more federal money in researching menopause, which she maintained was vastly under-researched and underfunded, and to push for changes to address how unprepared medical professionals are to help women seeking guidance and care.
“Many women can’t have sex anymore because of debilitating pain,” said Ms. Gillibrand, 59. “There is massive bleeding, massive mood swings — from depression to anger — some require a hysterectomy.”
Dismissing the symptoms of menopause as merely a few unpleasant night sweats and hot flashes, she said, disregards the far more serious and sometimes life-altering medical conditions that many women suffer from for years.
In some cases, she said, “you’re bleeding so much you can’t leave your bedroom.” She added: “It’s not talked about. That doesn’t mean it’s not common, or real, or very much part of menopause.”
The hearing, to be held by the Senate Committee on Aging, is set to occur in the final sprint toward the midterm elections, in which Democrats have been trying to focus their message on President Trump’s unpopular policies and the high cost of living and health care.
While the challenges of menopause would seem to have little to do with any of that, Ms. Gillibrand, who is the chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said the hearing was in line with her party’s campaign message.
“It’s highly relevant,” Ms. Gillibrand said, noting that the Trump administration had slashed funding for medical research across the board.
“It’s just health care,” she said. “It’s health care, it’s health care, it’s health care. The lack of good treatments and medicines and options and attention is relevant to 75 million people. What Democrats care about is health care, education and jobs. That’s our whole platform, and this is a huge relevant piece of it.”
Ms. Gillibrand said it was important to talk about how taxing menopause could be for many women, speaking in graphic detail about symptoms.
“We spend billions of dollars on Viagra to make sure men can have sex — what have you done to make sure women can have sex?” she said.
It was a topic that resonated strongly in the lobby of the Loews Regency on Park Avenue, where Ms. Gillibrand was laying it out.
“I have something called burning mouth syndrome,” said Lisa Humiston, 51, interrupting the interview to approach the senator and share her menopause horror story. “It’s the sensation that my mouth is burning at all times. It never goes away — I’ve had it for five years. Right now, my mouth is burning.”
As the senior Democrat on the aging panel, Ms. Gillibrand is entitled to lead one hearing per year on a topic of her choosing. Hers will be called “Half the Country, Zero Hearings: Meeting the Moment to End the Menopause Care Gap in America.” She also plans to call for the passage of bipartisan legislation to boost federal research on menopause.
Along with Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the Republican chairman of the committee, Ms. Gillibrand is also sending a letter to the Government Accountability Office requesting a study on the federal government’s role in menopause research and care.
While the government has long failed to devote federal resources to the issue, Ms. Gillibrand contended that the Trump administration had made the situation worse, citing the Food and Drug Administration’s recent decision to remove so-called black box warnings from all hormone replacement products containing estrogen.
“I’m wondering why they want women to have less information,” she said.
About 80 percent of OB-GYN residents admit to being ill-prepared to discuss menopause with their patients, according to the nonprofit organization Let’s Talk Menopause. And many women who seek medical care for symptoms of menopause are left untreated, the group said.
Nearly one in three women in the United States over the age of 40 experience severe menopause symptoms. Menopause-related symptoms cost $26 billion in medical expenses and lost work time annually, according to the Mayo Clinic.
In recent years, the issue has received new attention. The philanthropist Melinda French Gates has made significant new investments for midlife and menopause care, calling for what she described as a “menopause revolution in this country.”
The actress Halle Berry has lobbied lawmakers for more funding for researching menopause, sharing that her symptoms were for a time misdiagnosed by her doctor as herpes.
Ms. Gillibrand said she was committed to helping ensure that the government did more to address the topic.
“I’ve used my one hearing on the most under-researched, underreported, underanalyzed issue for women’s health, ever,” Ms. Gillibrand said. “From 50 to 58, I had either night sweats or hot flashes. I had to really look for a doctor who could take me through the hows and the whys and the impacts.”
Ms. Gillibrand said she was aware that her hearing topic would most likely put some of her male colleagues on uncomfortable terrain.
“Many men would never feel comfortable having a discussion about menstruation or menopause or even postpartum depression, or any aspect of women’s health,” she said. “They don’t have the comfort level to talk about it because it was taboo for so long.”
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