What Happened to HRT? The Women's Health Initiative Deep Dive

This week we tell you what the Women's Health Initiative actually studied, why the hormone therapy trial was stopped, and how the headlines shaped menopause care for decades.

The Women's Health Initiative was the study that made a generation of women toss their hormone therapy in the trash. Co-hosts Erin Stein and Dr. Gillian Goddard dig into one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of women's health ever done: more than 160,000 women, multiple clinical trials, an observational study, and millions of stored specimens that researchers are still mining today. We break down what was tested (hormone therapy, low-fat diets, and calcium plus vitamin D), and why it was never about treating menopause symptoms.

We explain why the hormone therapy trial stopped, share the real numbers behind the breast cancer headlines, and talk about what the real data. We also cover the lasting fallout, including a generation of women whose menopause symptoms went untreated, and what all of this says about how we fund and study women's health.