16/07/2025
We are incredibly inspired by Lupita Nyong’o’s powerful advocacy for uterine fibroid awareness and women’s health!
In 2014, the same year she won an Academy Award, Lupita discovered she had 30 uterine fibroids and underwent surgery to remove them. When she asked her doctor about prevention, she was told, “You can’t. It’s only a matter of time until they grow again.” This dismissive response fueled her mission to challenge the normalization of female pain and address a condition affecting 80% of Black women and 70% of white women.
Lupita’s experience sheds light on how little we speak about fibroids, despite their prevalence and potential for debilitating symptoms like heavy bleeding, pain, and pregnancy complications.
She emphasizes that we are often taught to accept period pain as normal, leading countless women to struggle in silence with a condition that affects most of us. “No more suffering in silence!” she declares, rejecting the idea that this massive issue is merely a series of unfortunate coincidences.
She envisions a future with early education for teenagers, better screening protocols, robust prevention research, and less invasive treatments. Lupita believes it’s time to comprehensively examine and prioritize this chronic condition.
For Fibroid Awareness Month, Lupita has taken concrete action.
She joined Congresswomen and Senators in Washington D.C. to introduce a package of Congressional bills aimed at expanding research funding, increasing early detection and interventions, studying the causes of uterine cancer, and raising public awareness.
In partnership with the Foundation for Women’s Health, she’s launching the FWH × Lupita Nyong’o Uterine Fibroid Research Grant. This grant will seek proposals for minimally invasive or noninvasive treatments to improve the quality of life for the 15 million patients suffering from this chronic condition in the U.S. alone.
Lupita’s courage to share her story and actively champion change is truly commendable. She reminds us that we deserve better and it’s time to demand it.
