Cleveland Clinic advances women’s health through tailored care for women in their midlife.
By Jenna Hughes
Women’s health issues, especially for patients age 40 and older, have for many years been misunderstood and under researched. As a result, many women are not aware of the health changes and symptoms that can come with aging and midlife.
“Much of women’s health has been understudied historically. There are many conditions that are female specific or that disproportionately impact women, or that impact women differently than men, and many of these issues have not been well studied,” said Dr. Pelin Batur, Department of Subspecialty Care for Women’s Health, within the Ob/Gyn & Women’s Health Institute at Cleveland Clinic.
To address the growing healthcare gap for middle-aged women, Cleveland Clinic launched the Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center, with the help of Maria Shriver, a well-known journalist, women’s health advocate, founder of the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement at Cleveland Clinic and the center’s Chief Visionary and Strategic Advisor, to empower women to navigate their personal health journey with confidence and clarity.
The Center specifically focuses on women as they move through their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond in facing health changes head on and feeling their best.
“It seemed like for women in midlife and beyond, healthcare fell off the map,” said Dr. Batur. “We knew that this was a critical group needing focused care.”
Since its launch in 2024, the Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center has served more than 10,000 patients, scheduled more than 19,000 appointments and hosted more than 1,000 virtual shared medical appointments focused on menopause.
The one-year anniversary of the Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center was celebrated at Cleveland Clinic’s inaugural Women’s Health Forum in June 2025, which brought together national leaders in healthcare, research and advocacy and served as both a celebration of progress and a call to action for the future of women’s health.
Midlife health
Women’s health issues such as menopause have a significant impact on an individual’s well-being, sleep, mental health and entire body.
“The lack of research around women’s midlife health is problematic because nearly 6,000 women each day go into menopause, and at that time in their life see a lot of changes in their health and their body,” said Dr. Batur. “In fact, 78% of women 55 and older have a chronic disease that they are dealing with, and the healthcare industry has not done a great job in studying these individuals and finding how to best take care of them.”
Menopause is a normal part of aging for women – not a disorder or disease – according to the National Institute on Aging. Some women have mild or no menopausal symptoms, but for others, the menopausal transition can bring various symptoms, including hot flashes, night sweats, trouble sleeping, joint and muscle discomfort, pain during intimacy, moodiness and irritability, forgetfulness, difficultly concentrating, or a combination of these.
Menopause symptoms can be managed through a variety of interventions including hormone therapy, medication and lifestyle adjustments. Treating menopause therefore requires a treatment plan that is tailored to each patient’s individual needs.
“The long-term Women’s Health Initiative Study came out to help answer the specific question of if all women should be on hormone prevention for treatment of menopause symptoms – the answer is that clinicians must weigh the pros and cons of the therapy for each individual patient,” said Dr. Batur. “For many years in the healthcare industry clinicians advised women against hormones, but the study proved it is more complicated than that, and women didn’t want to keep suffering through symptoms, they wanted solutions.”
The Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center attempts to bring an ‘in-between’ perspective to the treatment of women’s health issues by focusing on each individual patient’s potential to benefit from hormone therapy and other treatments.
“Hormone therapy is not poison, and it’s also not the fountain of youth,” said Dr. Batur. “The truth is that it’s somewhere in between, and we can only help women by educating our patients and clinicians and getting each individual the care that they need.”
The Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center
In response to female patients’ ongoing health concerns, Cleveland Clinic’s Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center chose to focus on a unique approach to care with four pillars: Connectivity, Access, Research, and Education.
“What we really want to do is connect (Connectivity Pillar) clinicians so that they are not looking at patients through their own specialty silo only. The Access Pillar explores how we bring access close to the patient with virtual visits and longer appointments,” said Dr. Batur. “Research is answering the questions that patients have for the clinic, and Education empowers patients to make informed decisions and educate colleagues about the importance of women’s health.”
Clinicians at Cleveland Clinic work together on complex women’s health issues to address the whole person and form a personalized treatment plan. The Center is built around allowing women to access a variety of different types of healthcare providers in one place.
“Our women’s behavioral health team, sleep neurologist, our hormone specialists, and our primary care doctors meet on a regular basis now to connect, teach each other, and figure out how best to serve our patients,” said Dr. Batur.
The healthcare programs available to women at the Center were built with accessibility for the average patient in mind – addressing economic barriers to care, acknowledging patient’s day-to-day personal responsibilities and keeping in mind scheduling and time concerns.
“Virtual care options are now available in 20 states across the U.S. to understand a patient’s preventative and health needs,” said Dr. Batur. “These services are accessible to everyone no matter the socioeconomic status or where throughout the nation they are coming from.”
A step in the right direction
The first step for patients who want to make an appointment at the Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center is to call and talk to a trained navigator at the Welcome Center.
Trained navigators meet with the facility’s doctors on a regular basis to communicate, so that when a patient calls, they can talk candidly about their health concerns to someone who understands them.
Once a patient reaches out, a navigator then schedules an evaluation to begin building them a personalized care plan.
Beyond menopause, the Center can create a plan to manage patient concerns including Alzheimer’s disease, breast pain, cancer risk assessment and genetic screening, diabetes, irregular periods, osteoporosis, pelvic pain and much more.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans living with Alzheimer’s are women, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Women are at the center of the Alzheimer’s crisis, but their experiences have long been overlooked in research. Cleveland Clinic aims to address these gaps through the first-of-its-kind Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement Prevention and Research Center. This program is designed to address women’s individualized risk for Alzheimer’s and is available through the Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center.
“We formed the Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center to really listen to and understand the voice of our patients who had felt as though physicians weren’t listening and doctors weren’t talking to each other, and to shed light on hormone therapy, as many people were misinformed about it as a treatment option.”
Cleveland Clinic is also revolutionizing the approach to patient appointments by addressing patient concerns through 90-minute virtual shared medical appointments, with real experts leading the conversation, to provide women with credible health information and everything they need to know about their health concern or diagnosis.
“These appointments are generally shared with 5 to 15 other women, with the opportunity throughout for questions that the patient themselves may not have asked,” said Dr. Batur. “This ensures that clinicians are providing patients with all the education they need so they can make informed decisions.”
Women’s Health Forum
The Cleveland Clinic Women’s Health Forum in June 2025 aimed to shed light on women’s health issues – with panel discussions on menopause, wellness, aging, and work-life balance, fireside chats, a conversation with a female author, a video series launch, and more led by Cleveland Clinic specialists and influential women executives.
“We learned that women have been craving this type of event, and the energy at the Forum was palpable,” said Dr. Batur. “Women want to see change and advancements on these topics. They weren’t aware that these types of services, such as the Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center, were available and they were enthusiastic about getting connected. This is why we’re here, and why we’re planning to host another Forum for next year.”
Takeaways of the conference included the advancement of women’s health innovation, showcasing the latest research on women’s health and fostering collaboration – but most importantly it was a space where women felt seen and supported, according to Dr. Batur.
“We started the Center focusing on midlife and beyond because it was an area of need,” said Dr. Batur. “Eventually our goal is to make this Center about serving women across the lifespan.”
For example, a woman’s care during pregnancy can impact cardiovascular disease in midlife, or how healthy blood vessels are at midlife can impact dementia risk in a woman’s later years of life.
“We need to be aware of how to take care of a variety of female patients in early life, diagnose and treat them, so that we can prevent issues like high blood pressure, brain health issues and whether a woman will age into wellness or disease,” said Dr. Batur. “We do a good job of care throughout the lifespan at Cleveland Clinic already and need to build on this going forward.”
Right now, the clinicians at the Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center plan to go forward by acknowledging the interconnected nature of women’s health and addressing health issues throughout the lifespan by expanding its services in the next four to five years.
“I’m proud to work in a place where colleagues feel passionate about this type of care for women,” said Dr. Batur. “We are able to reach more women and spend face to face time with them, and I know that we each truly care about managing each patient’s health holistically.”