Marni Sommer is an associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.
Bethany Caruso, a public health researcher with the Center for Global Safe Water at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has carried out research with adolescent girls, teachers, and parents around the world.
People, it seems, are comfortable talking about contraception and about girls living in poverty, but not about their periods, which remain a major hurdle to education in places where adequate facilities are non-existent.