Lisa Taylor-Swanson, PhD, on integrative group visits for menopause

Integrative medical group visits can extend menopause care to more women at once while improving symptoms and self-efficacy, according to a single-site feasibility pilot of the MENOGAP program and its lead author, Lisa Taylor-Swanson, PhD, LAc, Dipl AHM (NCBAHM), associate professor at the School of Medicine and the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute at the University of California, Irvine. The pilot was published in Menopause.¹

MENOGAP combines evidence-informed conventional and integrative health education with acupuncture therapy, co-delivered in a group visit by a menopause-certified physician and an acupuncturist; up to 82% of midlife women experience vasomotor and other symptoms during and after the menopausal transition.¹

Taylor-Swanson developed the program at the University of Utah after consulting midlife women through a community advisory board.

Addressing a gap in menopause care

Those conversations, along with the published literature, pointed to 3 issues, Taylor-Swanson said: most prescribing providers are not trained in menopause medicine, women are interested in integrative therapies such as acupuncture, yoga, mindfulness, herbs, and supplements, and women lack access to both conventional and integrative care. She adapted an existing evidence-based group-visit model, originally developed for chronic pain, for midlife women experiencing menopause.

“The gap in care is enormous,” Taylor-Swanson said, describing it as multifactorial. A central benefit, she said, is the social component of a group visit.

“The social support is what I call the secret sauce of a group medical visit,” Taylor-Swanson said, describing how participants learn from one another and recognize that they are “not actually losing my mind.”

Some participants described MENOGAP as “the best experience I’ve ever had receiving medical care,” she said, a reaction she found both gratifying and troubling given how long the women had waited for such care.

What the MENOGAP pilot found

In the single-arm pilot, no enrolled participants withdrew and 90.4% attended 3 or more sessions, with high ratings of acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility.¹

Menopause Rating Scale (MRS) scores improved significantly from baseline (P = .005), as did the somato-vegetative (P = .026) and psychological (P = .050) subscales.¹ Knowledge of the menopausal transition increased by 1.727 points (95% CI, 0.729-2.725; P = .002), and menopause self-efficacy increased by 0.612 points (95% CI, 0.139-1.085; P = .013).¹

Taylor-Swanson also pointed to the model’s capacity to serve more patients, noting that menopause clinics often have waiting lists of six to 12 months, which she called unacceptable. By bringing 6 to 10 or 12 women together, MENOGAP can provide education on perimenopause and the menopausal transition, hormonal and nonhormonal medications, and integrative therapies, she said.

Reference

1. Taylor-Swanson L, Tu W, Wong B, et al. Integrative medical group visits for menopause (MENOGAP): results of a pilot single-site feasibility study. Menopause. 2026. doi:10.1097/GME.0000000000002905