GreenShield is funding a new national study on menopause, partnering with the Women's Health Collective Canada (WHCC) on the Can-RISE study, which will look at how perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause affect Canadian women's health, finances and work.
The research is being led by the Partnership for Women's Health Research Canada (PWHR), a coalition of women's health research institutes in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and the Maritimes. The study is now recruiting women, transgender and non-binary participants aged 35 to 70 for a national questionnaire on quality of life, barriers to care, and where people get information during the menopause transition, with a focus on equity-deserving populations. PWHR has not set a completion date.
For group benefits advisors, this lands at a time when menopause has become a real cost line, not just an HR talking point. A 2023 Menopause Foundation of Canada report, with economic modelling by Deloitte Canada, found unmanaged menopause symptoms cost the Canadian economy $3.5 billion a year: $237 million in lost employer productivity and $3.3 billion in lost income for women who cut hours, take unpaid leave or leave the workforce.
Separately, Manulife's own claims data showed hormone replacement therapy use among women aged 45 to 65 rose 20.7% between 2020 and 2023, meaning use is climbing while coverage design hasn't kept pace.
GreenShield, which describes itself as Canada's only national non-profit health and benefits organization, has been pushing on hormonal health for over a year. It launched what it calls Canada's first Personalized Hormonal Health Program in mid-2025, then expanded it in July by adding clinical support from Coral, a Quebec hormonal health platform, into its GreenShield+ ecosystem. At the time, GreenShield said nearly 40% of women don't know where to seek treatment for hormonal health concerns, and only 13% of employers offer adequate support.
Funding a study is a different kind of move: instead of adding another service, GreenShield is helping build the evidence that plan sponsors and insurers will eventually use to design coverage and workplace policy.
"Together, we have an opportunity to strengthen understanding, elevate women's voices, and help translate evidence into action," said Amy Flood, WHCC's executive director. Mandy Mail, GreenShield's executive vice-president of GreenShield Cares, said the biggest evidence gaps remain for women from equity-seeking communities, whose experiences are underrepresented in existing research.
Advisors are already fielding more employer questions about menopause coverage. That gap showed up clearly at Benefits Canada's 2026 Vancouver Benefits Summit.
"We have so much knowledge now of the transitions, the health situations that women face, but yet we haven't seen that evolution in our benefits plans," said Erika Hatherly, strategic leader of drug programs, group benefits and retirement solutions at iA Financial Group. She added that plans still largely assume "men and women are going to interact with their plan equally, and that's just not true."
That gap has real consequences. Advisors quoting hormonal health add-ons or HRT coverage have had to rely on foundation-commissioned or single-insurer research, most of it not peer-reviewed and none built to isolate outcomes for equity-deserving groups. A national, investigator-led study gives advisors and plan sponsors a more independent, Canadian-specific evidence base than vendor white papers alone, though its actual effect on plan design will depend on when PWHR publishes results.
GreenShield also points to its Women's Mental Health Signature Initiative, which it says has connected close to 200,000 women from equity-deserving communities to free mental health services, as evidence its women's health strategy goes beyond hormonal treatment.
Whether Can-RISE changes plan design standards will depend on uptake beyond GreenShield itself, but its national scope and independent research leadership make that more likely than most vendor-funded reports.
