Sarah Chavarria walked into a meeting with her board of directors, sat down and said: “We need to talk about menopause.”
Never mind that the board was almost all older men at that 2023 meeting, one of her first in her new role as CEO and president of Delta Dental Insurance Company.
They all fell silent.
She told them that the vast majority of women over 50 didn’t know that their dry mouth and sensitive teeth were due to menopause. Fewer than 2% of them had ever discussed menopause with their dentist.
And at her most recent appointment? Her own dentist was reluctant to talk to her about it.
“The board got through their first five minutes of being surprised and ‘Are we really talking about this?’ and then something amazing happened,” she says. “They had science and information about menopause to connect with their wives and daughters in new ways.”
