Melinda French Gates: Privilege Didn't Help My Perimenopause

Melinda French Gates needed not one, not two, but three doctors to figure out what was happening to her body in her early 40s. On Wednesday's debut episode of Norah O'Donnell's podcast "Healthful," she said that while she knew which perimenopause symptoms to keep an eye out for based on her friends' experiences, "it was kind of unbelievable to me that, even in this, you know, unbelievably privileged situation I'm in, where I feel like I can get some of the best healthcare, it took me three doctors to really diagnose what I was going through and to get the right treatments for where I was."

French Gates, now 61, said that "wasn't because anybody was doing the wrong thing" but because of a system in which "only a third" of US OB-GYNs are trained in menopause, reports CBS News. In a June New York Times op-ed, French Gates called for a "menopause revolution" and pledged more funding for menopause care, research, and training.