St Agnes-founded NHS menstrual health service wins global award

A health programme that started life in Cornwall has picked up an international award, five years after its first pilot in the county.

Menstrual Cycle Support (MCS) won the Global Social Prescribing Innovation Award this week at the 2026 Global Social Prescribing Summit. The programme was founded by St Agnes-based social entrepreneur Kate Shepherd Cohen, and it is recognised as the world’s first menstrual health literacy service to be built into NHS social prescribing.

From a Cornwall pilot to 500 GP surgeries

Menstrual Cycle Support was first piloted in Cornwall in 2021. It has since spread across the country and is now available through more than 500 GP surgeries, school nursing services and NHS Women’s Health Hubs across the UK. Mental health teams, social workers, counsellors, therapists, support workers and secondary care services are using it too, a sign that menstrual health literacy is being taken seriously across the wider health and care system.

The scale of the problem it addresses is significant. Around 90% of women experience period pain during their lifetime, one in 10 live with endometriosis, and people with the condition in England wait an average of almost nine years for a diagnosis. Those with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) wait an average of 12 years. Many spend those years believing debilitating symptoms are simply something to put up with.

Why Kate founded it

Kate Shepherd Cohen set up Menstrual Cycle Support after living with crippling PMDD herself, and after questioning why so many people reach adulthood without understanding the menstrual cycle or recognising when symptoms are not normal.

“I’m incredibly proud that something which began here in Cornwall has now been recognised on the world stage,” she said. “I founded Menstrual Cycle Support because I spent years living with crippling PMDD and didn’t understand what my body was trying to tell me. That experience convinced me that menstrual health literacy is one of the missing pieces of modern healthcare. When people understand the menstrual cycle, they don’t just understand their periods better, they understand their health better.”

What the courses actually do

The programme offers two free, peer-reviewed digital courses that anyone can access without a referral, one for adults and one for young people, developed in partnership with Endometriosis UK. Each takes around 30 to 40 minutes to complete.

They introduce an approach called menstrual cycle awareness, which helps people understand the physical, emotional and psychological changes that happen across the cycle, recognise when symptoms need medical support, and talk more confidently with healthcare professionals. The focus is on the menstrual cycle as a part of everyday health throughout the month, rather than on periods or reproduction alone.

You can find both courses, free of charge and without a referral, at the Menstrual Cycle Support website. The young people’s course is aimed at ages 11 and up.

Still working in Cornwall schools

Since launching in the county, Menstrual Cycle Support has kept working closely with local GP surgeries and Cornwall Women’s Health Hub. This year it is delivering a multi-school Menstrual Health Literacy Accreditation pilot across Cornwall Education Learning Trust (CELT) schools, funded by Cornwall Council’s Education Welfare Service. The pilot aims to improve menstrual health literacy, strengthen support for pupils, train school staff and parents, and help schools with attendance, wellbeing and safeguarding.

More than 1,000 people have now completed the courses. An independent evaluation by Dr Marie Polley OBE, founder of Meaningful Measures, and Dr Helen Seers found statistically significant improvements in participants’ relationship with their menstrual cycle and their confidence speaking with healthcare professionals. Nearly two-thirds saw a clinically meaningful improvement in their primary concern after finishing the course.

Vicky Thornton, Girls’ Wellbeing and Inclusion Lead at Cornwall Council, said: “This is wonderful recognition for an innovation that began here in Cornwall. It demonstrates how ideas developed locally can have the potential to influence health and wellbeing far beyond our county. Menstrual health literacy has the power to improve confidence, wellbeing and health outcomes for our young people, and we’re proud to be supporting this work in our Cornwall schools while seeing its impact recognised on the global stage.”

Gareth Presch, founder and CEO of the World Health Innovation Summit, said: “Health systems around the world are searching for innovative, scalable ways to improve population health. By integrating menstrual health literacy into social prescribing, Kate Shepherd Cohen has developed exactly that, a pioneering model with the potential to influence how healthcare systems approach menstrual health internationally.”

The adult programme launched nationally in the UK Parliament in 2022, and the young people’s programme launched in the House of Commons in 2024. Menstrual Cycle Support also took the International Social Prescribing Awards Innovator of the Year Award back in 2021.