Could specialist endometriosis education be coming to NSW public high schools?

A parliamentary petition is calling on the NSW Government to fund specialist endometriosis education in public high schools. Advocates say it could help young people recognise symptoms years earlier than many women do now.

About one in seven Australian girls and women live with endometriosis, a condition that can cause severe pain. For teenagers, the signs are easy to miss. Painful periods can be mistaken for normal ones, bodies are changing, and few young people have been taught what to look out for.

The petition is sponsored by independent state MP for Murray Helen Dalton. It asks for funding to bring the Periods, Pain and Endometriosis Program, known as PPEP Talk, to NSW public high schools for both girls and boys. It has gathered more than 1,700 signatures since launching in August.

PPEP Talk is an hour-long session run by the Pelvic Pain Foundation of Australia and began in 2019, after the launch of the National Action Plan for Endometriosis. It is already running in Catholic and independent schools across the country, and in public schools in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

Its key features are:

• It is delivered by external clinical educators rather than classroom teachers

• It helps students understand pelvic pain, periods and the symptoms of endometriosis

• It gives students private, one-on-one time with the educator afterwards

The delivery model is deliberate. Polly Levinson, who has taught the program for almost four years, says teachers often feel uncomfortable going beyond the biology of puberty. A 2022 peer-reviewed study of menstrual health education in Australian schools found that some PDHPE teachers lacked confidence teaching puberty and menstruation. Students, meanwhile, often prefer not to share deeply personal health details with a teacher they will see at sport the next day. Levinson says the one-on-one time at the end has also helped educators pick up on conditions students may not have known to raise.

Dalton argues that female educators are better placed to lead these conversations, and that it makes more sense to back an existing program than to build a new one. The NSW Department of Education has said it will launch its own pelvic health and endometriosis education program next year, aimed at supporting teachers to talk about the condition.

For Dr Trudi Beck, co-founder of an endometriosis and pelvic pain clinic in Wagga Wagga, the case comes down to early intervention. She says young women often put up with pain for too long and only come forward once heavy periods have caused iron deficiency and missed school. In regional areas, where support is scarce, some women travel 200 to 300 kilometres each way for care. Reaching them while they are still at school, she says, could prevent long-term consequences of undiagnosed endometriosis.

This is exactly the gap Ovum was built to close. By bringing together symptoms, cycles, wearable data and medical history over time, Ovum helps women spot patterns sooner and walk into appointments with evidence rather than guesswork.

Sources: ABC News and the Pelvic Pain Foundation of Australia.