Winner
Calling Time on Heavy and Painful Periods
by Stirred for Wellbeing of Women
Summary of work
Heavy and painful periods affect the majority of women, yet many delay seeking medical help for almost two years, and 31% never seek medical help at all. Normalisation, stigma and fear of dismissal suppress help-seeking and undermine confidence in navigating care.
The Period Symptom Checker, developed as part of the wider “Just a Period” campaign, was designed to empower women experiencing heavy bleeding and severe pain to understand when to seek help and confidently engage with their GP.
Co-created with gynaecologists, GPs and women with lived experience, the tool provides tailored guidance for those with symptoms serious enough to warrant medical attention, to support shared decision-making and reduce consultation anxiety. But building the checker was just the first step, the next was driving uptake.
In 2025, nearly 70,000 women completed the checker. For 92% of the women who completed the checker, their symptoms were deemed serious enough to receive a personalised GP letter. Post-checker survey results found that 6 in 10 respondents had since attended a GP appointment.
This programme demonstrates how insight-led, empathic, and ethically designed communication can strengthen patient confidence and convert unmet need into meaningful and more timely healthcare engagement.
Judges’ comments
‘Calling Time on Heavy and Painful Periods’ was a stand-out campaign that was extremely insightful, strategically clever and well executed. The outcomes are stellar, demonstrating clear behaviour change and tangible real-world impact on the support offered for women. It was a highly effective campaign that successfully activated women who may not otherwise have visited their GP. The symptom checker really made a difference for women with painful periods and the amount of meaningful work delivered pro bono is impressive. It ticks all the boxes to deliver a well-timed, integrated programme, optimally using established, tried and tested strategies – a campaign to be proud of!
