Blog Updates

Hello Ageless Science! My name is Leah Berger, and I’m a student volunteer with Ageless Science. There haven’t been blog posts here for a while, so I wanted to help start things up again. I’m especially interested in biological anthropology, so I’ll be sharing some of my own posts from leahbergersblog.com to get things rolling!

The Trailblazing Work of Professor Lynette Sievert

When I spoke with Professor Lynette Sievert, a biological anthropologist at UMass Amherst who studies women’s health and menopause, I left feeling both inspired and alarmed. Her work highlights how recent and fragile progress in this field still is.

Professor Sievert began her career in nursing but soon realized that medical care often failed to consider patients’ cultural backgrounds. This realization led her to anthropology. “When I was taking classes in anthropology, I took a class in biological anthropology and thought, wow, this is just fantastic. Then I slowly changed from nursing to anthropology, and now I’m an anthropologist,” she said.

She explained that biological anthropology connects biology, culture, and medicine, opening paths into fields like public health and medical research. Many of her students, she noted, used tools such as hot flash monitors and body measurements that later prepared them for medical or graduate programs.

I was surprised to learn how recently women’s health research began gaining real attention. Until 1993, women were not even required to be included in federally funded clinical studies. “You can see in human biology that there was a shift at that time,” Professor Sievert said. “There’s more awareness of women’s health in the 1990s.”

She also described how early anthropologists viewed menopause through a narrow, often sexist lens, but that newer research has become far more nuanced. “I think that we’re better than we used to be. Our questions are more interesting than they used to be,” she reflected.

Professor Sievert recommended Period by Kate Clancy and Ancient Bodies, Modern Lives by Wenda Trevathan and encouraged students to attend the Human Biology Association’s annual conference. But she also voiced concern about the future of the field. “Words like female, women, and gender are now targeted words,” she warned. “I worry about what work we can do in the future as long as this administration has this power.”

As a student passionate about science communication and equity, I left our conversation feeling even more determined. Women’s health deserves deeper, broader, and more inclusive research. Thanks to mentors like Professor Sievert, I’m excited to help carry that work forward.