Women across Melbourne’s south east are gaining access to new health services and community activities as governments and local organisations place greater focus on improving women’s health and wellbeing.
A new Menopause Connecting Care Clinic has opened at Bayside Health’s Sandringham Hospital, providing free specialist support for women experiencing menopause, perimenopause and related hormonal conditions.
The clinic brings together an endocrinologist, GPs specialising in menopause, a nurse practitioner, physiotherapist, dietitian and psychologist. By providing access to different areas of care through one service, the clinic is intended to make it easier for women to receive coordinated support closer to home.
The Victorian Government said the clinic is one of 20 Women’s Health Clinics being established across the state under a $153 million women’s health package. The broader programme also includes sexual and reproductive health hubs, a virtual women’s health clinic, a mobile women’s health clinic and an Aboriginal women’s health clinic.
The package follows Victoria’s Inquiry into Women’s Pain, which examined experiences of pain and barriers women can face when seeking healthcare.
Health Minister Ingrid Stitt said the new clinic would improve access to specialist hormonal care.
“For too long, women have struggled to access specialist hormonal care,” Stitt said. “This new clinic will make it easier to get the best care quickly and close to home.”
Parliamentary Secretary for Health Pauline Richards said bringing health professionals together would provide women in Melbourne’s south east with a more coordinated pathway to care.
“This new clinic brings experts together under one roof, giving women across Melbourne’s south east free, coordinated specialist care closer to home,” Richards said.
Alongside the new clinical service, Bayside is also hosting a Women’s Health Week event aimed at bringing younger women together with their mothers, grandmothers or carers.
The free event will be held on Saturday 5 September from 11am to 3pm at the Bayside City Council Corporate Centre in Sandringham. It will include activities focused on health, wellbeing and connection, including discussions around digital boundaries and healthy technology habits, traditional Aboriginal weaving, a shared healthy lunch, group meditation and a sound bath.
The event is being delivered in support of Bayside’s Health and Inclusion Plan 2025-2029, contributing to several of the plan’s stated goals.
While the community event and the new menopause clinic are separate initiatives, both reflect a wider focus on making women’s health support more accessible at a local level.
The menopause clinic is aimed specifically at women seeking specialist healthcare for hormonal conditions, while the Women’s Health Week event takes a broader community approach, creating space for women and different generations of families to discuss wellbeing and build connections.
The Victorian Government has also used the announcement of the new clinic to criticise the opposition, claiming the services could be at risk under a proposed spending cuts programme. Those claims form part of Labor’s political campaigning and were not independently substantiated in the announcement.
For local women, the two initiatives offer different forms of support: one through specialist healthcare and the other through community-based activities centred on wellbeing, education and connection.
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