On 5 April 2018, the documentary Period. End of Sentence. premiered at the Cleveland International Film Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. In the documentary, Rayka Zehtabchi, the director of the film, documents the stigma surrounding menstruation in India and follows a group of women in Kathikhera, a rural village in the Hapur district of India, as they manufacture and distribute sanitary pads. A group of high school students at Oakwood High School in Los Angeles, California, raised money to produce the documentary after one student was inspired by her visit to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York City, New York, which focused on the stigma surrounding menstruation in low-income countries. Period. End of Sentence. draws attention to the obstacles impeding proper menstrual health management in low-income contexts by documenting the women of Kathikhera’s journey to manufacture and sell sanitary pads.

In July 2015, Marni Sommer and colleagues published “Comfortably, Safely, and Without Shame: Defining Menstrual Hygiene Management as a Public Health Issue,” hereafter “Defining MHM,” in American Journal of Public Health. The authors discuss that growing interest in the gender gap in education raised awareness about girls’ obstacles to managing menstruation, especially in low-income countries. Increased focus on MHM pushed menstruation to be redefined as a public issue rather than a private one. That transition made MHM the responsibility of national governments instead of just the responsibility of young girls, because it became more widely recognized that girls could only appropriately manage menstruation if they had access to the necessary resources through public infrastructure. “Defining MHM” outlines how defining MHM as a public health issue brought much-needed attention to the obstacles to MHM young girls face and emphasizes that other underrepresented public health issues could use similar tactics as the MHM movement to gain global attention and funding.