Making Milestones: Intervening for the future of menstrual education

From cold calling a Curtin Professor with a research idea, Felicity has developed an award-winning research project aimed at equipping young women with the knowledge they need to fully understand how their bodies work.

Dr. Felicity Roux recently completed a PhD from the School of Population Health, co-supervised by Curtin University’s Professor Sharyn Burns, Dr. Jacqui Hendriks and Dr. Hui Jun Chih. Felicity and Sharyn reflected on the research intervention program, “My Vital Cycles”, its positive effects on menstrual health education in high schools and the PhD journey.   

Felicity:

Academically, I started off in economics and trained to be an economist. My next degree was in theology and philosophy. In terms of employment, I was working clinically in helping couples understand their fertility to either achieve or avoid pregnancy. I could see how much that meant for them.

A lot of the couples I worked with would say, ‘Why aren’t we taught this in schools?’. Once you learn and understand what’s going on in your own body, you never forget it. I’ve noticed that time and time again when I’ve shown women how to recognise their ovulation. It’s a wonderful gift to give someone.

I was really motivated to do a PhD about teaching the menstrual cycle. So I contacted UWA, Notre Dame, Murdoch, Edith Cowan and Curtin. The only person who seemed really interested was Sharyn.

My PhD involved developing and trialling a school-based ovulatory menstrual health literacy program, called “My Vital Cycles”, for teenagers based on the Whole Person perspective. It aims to give young women life-long skills to understand and manage their cycles and to communicate their cycle health accurately and confidently.

I had a very clear idea about the intervention and what I wanted it to achieve. First of all, I wanted to improve young girls’ own knowledge about how their bodies worked. Secondly, I wanted to help them get to a point of acceptance: having your period isn’t dirty or disgusting, it’s a sign of good health.

I initially wanted to implement the program in every school in WA and Sharyn helped me to narrow it down to something that was achievable and to realise the PhD is just the first step in getting some good research in place.

The challenge with school-based research is always recruitment; getting schools on board is the main challenge to overcome. Once I had found a school that wanted to participate, I then had a different challenge: the students themselves weren’t interested. I was blown away. This was central to their being; didn’t they want to understand themselves better?

They admitted this in the end and that was probably the most gratifying thing I got out of it.  Often with a pre and a post comparison of an intervention’s effectiveness, there can be a big drop off. That did not happen in my case.

In fact, I was having girls come up to me afterwards saying: ‘Oh, can I join in with the research, I want to answer the questionnaire now.’ In the last open-response question, one girl wrote: ‘I admit that in the beginning I had a bad attitude, but I think it’s a great program with a great message and I admire what you’re doing for young women.’ Every time I read that, I’d tear up.

The project achieved outstanding results. It showed that there is a need for this and that the program can make a difference. It’s been a privilege to work on and to achieve the PhD, but I think it would be more amazing to see the program taken up by schools across Western Australia. The next stage is now to get funding to implement the program so that teachers and nurses take it on for themselves and make the program sustainable.

Sharyn:

Supervisors get a lot of cold calls and emails from prospective PhD students. Felicity was one of those. She seemed very passionate and because my research is very much around school based sexual and mental health, I thought it very much aligned. We met and I’m very glad that we became a team. She’s been fantastic.  

As a supervisor, I believe that students should have autonomy. Ultimately, it’s their research, they are the director. But in saying that, I also like to make sure they’re going in the right direction. We have regular meetings just to touch base and to keep on track. A PhD is a long period of time and as staff we get really busy. It’s important to have that regular catch up and update – and to get together with the other supervisors so we can discuss things as a team.

The results from the program were great. One of the biggest strengths was the co-design. It was co-designed right from the start with different experts, parents, teachers and students. Felicity even had Medical School students deliver one of the modules, which is a powerful tool. As part of that, she did some research that highlights a strong need for more menstrual health literacy in medical school student training.

There were a few other achievements throughout the project. For one, Felicity was approached by Modibodi to do some research with them. She also published widely; each stage of the project has been published, which is important because it’s contributing to the knowledge showing how a good co-design project can be implemented.

Eight years is quite a long time, but Felicity has done it part-time while working, bringing up a family, looking after her ageing parents, all those sorts of issues that we go through in life. Doing a PhD on top of all of that is amazing. She’s so passionate and that is something I’ve really admired about her. It has been a pleasure.

About the researchers: