Menstrual equity is defined as having sufficient access to menstrual products, menstrual education, and reproductive health care for all people who menstruate regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity, education, place of residence, or country. In 2022, the World Health Organization finally called for menstrual health to be recognized and addressed as a health and human rights issue, rather than a hygiene issue.1
Period poverty is more than just a lack of access to menstrual products. It’s a complex problem intertwined with social stigma, gender inequality, and economic barriers.
Since the formation of the grassroots organization Love Your Menses (LYM), menstrual equity has always been the agenda. In an effort to eliminate barriers to menstrual equity and improve health in different countries across the globe, LYM has expanded its programs to include the use of health technology.
In 2019, Love Your Menses was founded by Ebere Azumah and her partner in Boston, Massachusetts in response to the reports of shame and embarrassment experienced by women and girls due to period stigma. The organization seeks to address the barriers girls face in managing their periods because of period poverty, the lack of resources such as education and period products.
Consequently, Love Your Menses has positively impacted life opportunities like their rights to education, work, water and sanitation, non-discrimination, and gender equality — and ultimately to health. As a global nonprofit organization, the mission of LYM is to dispel myths surrounding menstruation, promote menstrual equity, and build the next generation of leaders. The organization accomplishes this by providing an educational, uplifting, and supportive space for Black and Brown girls, which includes Africans, African Americans, Caribbean Americans, South Asians, and Hispanics, to learn about the menstrual cycle and create innovative public health solutions.
The use of health technologies to improve population-level health outcomes around the world has surged in the last decade.2 Mobile health (mHealth) is the use of voice calls, short message service (SMS), wireless transmission of data, and mobile phone applications to support healthcare provision. Various studies have found that digital health and specifically mHealth have been shown to increase access to health information, services and skills, as well as promote positive changes in health behaviors to prevent the onset of acute and chronic diseases in low resource settings.
Mobile phone penetration is increasing exponentially in low-and middle-income countries3, raising the importance for using mobile phones, rather than traditional forms of healthcare provision, to extend healthcare services that reach more people in resource-limited settings. Research supports the use of mHealth apps to improve reproductive health outcomes such as prevention of communicable diseases and maternal and infant mortality.3 Prior studies have also shown that mobile health applications have been extensively used in transforming healthcare services in terms of screening and diagnoses of infectious and non-infectious diseases.4
LYM is committed to uplifting the voices of communities internationally and equipping local leaders with equitable resources to promote and sustain menstrual equity in their communities. For this reason, LYM created FlowTech4Girls, a global virtual spring program aimed at educating youth about menstrual health and menstrual equity by using technology as a tool to foster intercultural collaboration as a potential solution in ending period poverty.
By partnering with local grassroots organizations in Liberia, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda, the FlowTech4Girls program has been able to improve menstrual health globally by making change from the ground up. Love Your Menses emphasizes community health over a top-down approach to healthcare delivery, directly interacting with community stakeholders in low-income villages to better understand gaps in health care. By focusing on the health needs of specific communities, interventions can be tailored to address the unique challenges and barriers to robust healthcare access within that community.
The initial FlowTech4Girls program began in January 2021 specifically aimed at Black and Brown girls ages 10-14 living in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. 12 youths participated in a 10 week program, during the COVID Pandemic in which they used graphic/UI design and created a mobile app called OurFlow. OurFlow is an educational menstrual wellness resource designed by and for youth, that includes information on menstruation, a period tracker and a chat bot.
In 2023, the participation expanded to include students not only from the United States, but from Liberia, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. The participants were females between the ages of 12-18 years old. A youth cohort of 24 girls met weekly on Saturdays to learn about how technology can play a role in menstrual equity and public health. Social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook can be used to motivate and support healthy behavior such as proper menstrual hygiene and correct use of period products, especially in target audiences such as teenagers. The 2023 cohort of students convened and learned to use different social media and technological platforms to create campaigns which addressed cultural stigmas and taboos surrounding menstruation. LYM is paving the way for other health organizations to use social media to share educational content, infographics and videos to promote menstrual health awareness and equity.
This program was very successful with great post-event evaluation. From the 2023 cohort, 90% of the participants reported that they developed better self-esteem, while 78% felt they understood the menstrual cycle and health better. Staff of the programs in Liberia and Uganda especially emphasized the work with Love Your Menses as being beneficial to their long term menstrual equity goals and helping to pave the way for future menstrual health programs in their local areas. “It has been so amazing being part of this program,” our LYM coordinator in Liberia stated. “Our girls and I enjoy every step of the way, up to the end. And I want to thank you. For sure, we couldn’t make it without you.”
By the end of the program, the participants from FlowTech4Girls were more educated, informed, and empowered to love their menses and to flow through life unapologetically.
This year’s cohort of youth will be focusing on creating Public Service Announcement videos on period poverty, and caring for the environment through tree planting. By telling their stories and using social media as a platform for change, not only their peers but adults and local government officials in their countries will become more aware of the consequences of having limited access to menstrual health resources.
For more information or registration for this cohort, please visit our website: FlowTech4Girls | Love Your Menses or email info@loveyourmenses.com.
Written by Ebere Azumah and Ilyssa Otto
- World Health Organization. (2022). Who statement on Menstrual Health and rights. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news/item/22-06-2022-who-statement-on-menstrual-health-and-rights
- Kruse, C., Betancourt, J., Ortiz, S., Valdes Luna, S. M., Bamrah, I. K., & Segovia, N. (2019). Barriers to the Use of Mobile Health in Improving Health Outcomes in Developing Countries: Systematic Review. Journal of medical Internet research, 21(10), e13263. https://doi.org/10.2196/13263
- Poushter, J. (2016). Smartphone ownership and internet usage continues to climb in emerging economies. Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2016/02/22/smartphone-ownership-and-internet-usage-continues-to-climb-in-emerging-economies/
- Osei, E., & Mashamba-Thompson, T. P. (2021). Mobile health applications for disease screening and treatment support in low-and middle-income countries: A narrative review. Heliyon, 7(3), e06639. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06639
Wow, I personally we’re engaged in this program, it changed so many lives of young girls in our community toward menstrual health and technology. We are so grateful for the Work Love Your Menses does across the world.
Awesome. I am happy to be part of this organization. Period poverty can be defined as the lack of access to safe and hygienic menstrual products during monthly periods and inaccessibility to basic sanitation services or facilities as well as menstrual hygiene education. Difficulty in affording menstrual products can cause girls to stay home from school and work, with lasting consequences on their education and economic opportunities. Thanks, Love your Menses for this trajectory projection. We are going far.