Most women over 50 assume cervical cancer is behind them. It isn't. HPV can sit dormant in the body for decades and surface as cancer long after menopause, but screening rates drop 24 percent once women transition through menopause. Nenrot S. Gopep, a physician and public health researcher who studies screening gaps in postmenopausal women, explains why this cancer is not a young woman's disease, and what every woman over 45 should be asking her doctor right now.

⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:15 The screening gap nobody is talking about
2:23 The 24 percent drop after menopause
4:18 The myth that is killing older women
5:56 What primary care doctors are missing in the exam room
7:36 Why the HPV vaccine age limit just changed
9:15 What every parent needs to know about the HPV vaccine
10:15 What Australia figured out that the US hasn't
11:07 The questions every woman over 45 should ask her doctor
12:17 What a hysterectomy does and doesn't change
13:06 Take home messages

About this episode:
Nenrot S. Gopep is a physician and public health researcher who, during her master's at Georgia Southern University, used the Health and Retirement Survey to quantify how often postmenopausal women stop getting screened for cervical cancer. Her finding: women who transition through menopause are 24 percent less likely to receive a pap smear four years later, even after controlling for age, insurance, and socioeconomic status. She walks through why this gap exists, including the widespread belief that cervical cancer is a sexually transmitted disease of younger women, when in fact HPV can lie dormant for decades and most cervical cancer cases occur in older women. She argues that decoupling cervical cancer from the sexually-transmitted-infection framing is critical, especially for women who are no longer sexually active, women who have sex with women, and women in long monogamous relationships who assume they are not at risk. She also covers updated HPV vaccine eligibility (now available up to age 40 at provider discretion), why both boys and girls should be vaccinated, and what questions every patient should bring to their primary care visit. Her closing message to clinicians: make sure women have actually met the exit criteria before letting them stop screening.

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