Australia's first national menopause guideline is coming

What just happened

Australia is developing its first national living guideline for menopause and perimenopause, funded by $2.9 million from the Federal Government over three years. The project is led by the Australian Living Evidence Collaboration (ALEC) at Monash University, with partners including the Australasian Menopause Society, Jean Hailes for Women’s Health, RACGP, the Endocrine Society of Australia, and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

The guideline will cover diagnosis, assessment, and management of perimenopause and menopause symptoms, long-term health considerations — including cardiovascular risk, bone health, and cognitive function — and the early postmenopausal period. Draft recommendations will be shared publicly for feedback before finalisation. Development is expected to take approximately two years.

This is a direct response to the 2024 Senate inquiry into menopause and perimenopause in Australia, which found that medical students receive on average one hour of menopause education across their entire undergraduate training. For the women who spent years being told their hot flushes, brain fog, sleep disruption, and joint pain were anxiety, normal ageing, or something to manage better — that one-hour figure will not be surprising. That figure lands as an explanation — not a surprise.

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The both-and

Why this matters — and what the format means

(If you’re looking for what GPs can do now for menopause cognitive symptoms, the July piece on brain fog as a legitimate menopause symptom covers that ground.)

Australia has not had a unified national framework for managing menopause in general practice. GPs have navigated a patchwork of resources: Australasian Menopause Society guidance, Jean Hailes for Women’s Health materials, eTG clinical summaries, and international guidelines that do not always map cleanly onto Australian medicine, PBS prescribing patterns, or the needs of a culturally diverse Australian population.

The “living” format is genuinely significant. Unlike a traditional guideline — written once, reviewed every five to seven years, and quietly outdated within months of publication as new trial data arrives — a living guideline is updated continuously. The evidence base for hormone therapy, cardiovascular risk stratification, bone health management, and cognitive effects in menopause is shifting quickly. A guideline capable of incorporating new data without waiting for a formal review cycle is better medicine.

The partnership structure reflects clinical complexity. Menopause intersects endocrinology, cardiovascular medicine, musculoskeletal health, and psychological wellbeing. Bringing the Australasian Menopause Society, Endocrine Society, and RACGP into a single evidence-collaboration framework should reduce the inconsistencies that have long made menopause care feel fragmented to both patients and clinicians — and made it harder for GPs to feel confident about what the right answer actually is.

What it does not fix — not yet

The guideline is two years away. For a woman in perimenopause now — with irregular cycles, severe sleep disruption, brain fog, and a GP uncertain about whether hormone therapy is appropriate for her risk profile — two years is not an abstract timeline.

The 2024 Senate inquiry finding about medical education sits alongside this announcement as an uncomfortable parallel. The guideline addresses what clinicians should do. The education gap — one hour of undergraduate menopause training — is a question about whether the current GP workforce knows how to do it. A guideline does not retrain a workforce. The question of how the framework reaches clinicians, particularly those who trained before structured menopause content existed, is a separate and harder problem.

There is also the question of implementation. Australian clinical guidelines have a mixed record of real-world uptake. Guideline publication and practice change are not the same thing. The RACGP’s involvement — nominating a steering committee representative — is encouraging precisely because it signals that the translation into general practice language is intended to happen during development, not as an afterthought.

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My two cents

This is the right announcement at the right time. The women who organised, gave evidence to the Senate inquiry, and insisted their experience was a clinical problem — not a personal failing or an inevitable feature of middle age — should see this happen.

For women currently in perimenopause: the Australasian Menopause Society and Jean Hailes for Women’s Health have current, evidence-informed resources available now. They are not the new national guideline, but they are the closest Australian equivalent and they are free and accessible.

For GPs: the two-year development window is also a consultation opportunity. Draft recommendations will be open for clinician feedback during development. Engaging with the draft — rather than waiting for the finished product — is how guidelines end up describing real clinical complexity rather than theoretical frameworks.

Verdict: yes — meaningful progress on a long-neglected area, and a genuine reason for cautious optimism if you are navigating menopause care in 2026.

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Sources cited

1. First national living menopause guideline to be developed — newsGP, 3 September 2026. https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/first-national-living-menopause-guideline-to-be-de
2. Australasian Menopause Society — clinical resources. https://www.menopause.org.au
3. Jean Hailes for Women’s Health — perimenopause and menopause. https://jeanhailes.org.au/health-a-z/menopause