【GHP Special Lecture】 World Menstruation Day - Vivi Lin
On June 1st, 2023, the NTU College of Public Health Global Health Program, with support from the InDiE Fund, hosted Vivi Lin, the CEO and founder of the local NGO With Red (小紅帽). Originally from Luodong, Vivi is the first Taiwanese person ever to win the Diana Award for social action/humanitarian work. Multiple members of her staff are also graduates of the NTU College of Public Health.
The With Red organization has made headlines worldwide as the first in Taiwan to focus on menstrual health. From education to advocacy to research to policy, With Red is trying to address menstrual stigma. For example, Vivi mentioned the journey to partner with Xia Hai Cheng Huang Temple (霞海城隍廟), in order to counter the taboo that one is not allowed to enter a temple while menstruating. After facing initial resistance, more temples have supported the initiative and even offered amulets for smooth periods. Another focus of With Red is menstrual education, including teacher and social worker training. Health classes in Taiwan traditionally separated boys and girls to teach about menstruation, further generating shame around the topic. With Red worked with TaiwanBar to create modern educational videos: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HtguYZfrMDs. With Red has also begun tackling period poverty, distributing period supplies regularly in over 22 cities around the island, as well as sending products to Ukraine. Their policy arm has resulted in period products being provided in various MRT stations around Taipei. Finally, Vivi invited everyone to stop by their free Red House Period Museum near Yuanshan Station, open Tuesday through Sunday. It serves as a physical location for their historical preservation efforts.
The event was co-coordinated by Betty Lin (a second-year student in Healthy Policy and Management Master’s Program, researching sexual health among breast cancer patients) and Alexandra Lombardo (a second-year student in the Global Health Master’s Program). Alexandra was particularly inspired by the coming together of the two worlds of research and advocacy at this event, especially as Vivi stressed the importance of filling the current research gap. Alexandra's Master’s thesis is entitled Menstrual Health, Associated Factors and their Impact on Young Taiwanese Women: An Exploratory Study. She is also conducting similar research on period poverty with a women’s health lab in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, as she plans to return to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine this month to graduate with her MD and pursue a career as globally-minded gynecologist. A 2021 GHP graduate, Fariha Hossain, has also done research related to menstrual health. Her Master’s thesis was entitled: Menstrual Cup Use Intention Among Female University Students: Examples from Bangladesh and Japan. She currently works for the CDC in the United States.
Vivi Lin’s talk reminded students of material covered in Professor Po-Han Lee’s Evidence-Based Global Health Policies class, Professor Rita Jhang’s Health Communication and Advocacy class, and Professor Chen-I Kuan’s Gender and Health class—a class that Vivi herself once audited. Additionally, NTU has recently begun to offer a novel class entirely on menstruation, called Period: Theory, Thoughts, and Actions.
We hope that this event will precipitate future collaboration between NTU and With Red, as well as other local NGOs. As Vivi Lin said, the ultimate goal is the period equity, where everyone can be their true selves.
