Photo: © ellenmarytaylor / What about me?
A new online menstrual health resource is being launched today to address the gap in adolescents' knowledge about menstruation and common conditions like endometriosis.
More than 27 percent of young women miss school each month due to severe period pain, and more than 70 percent of under 24 year olds have bad periods.
Endometriosis affects one in nine women and girls, but most experience lengthy delays, an average of 8.7 years, to get a diagnosis.
The online platform called What About me? has been developed by Deborah Bush, who founded Endometriosis New Zealand.
It builds on a menstrual health and endometriosis programme which ran in schools from 1998 to 2019, and was a world first at the time.
Deborah Bush is the director of What about me? and has spent the last two years focused on getting her resource to reach a wider audience, by going online.
