For many women, midlife comes with questions they did not expect to be asking.
Why am I so tired? Why am I not sleeping? Why do I feel anxious when I never used to? Why does my body feel different even though I have not changed much about how I live?
For Tina Vidal-Duart, those questions started showing up everywhere. In conversations with friends. In conversations with women her age. And eventually, in her own life.
What surprised her most was not that so many women were experiencing changes. It was how often they felt dismissed after asking for help.
“I kept hearing the same story from women over and over again,” Vidal-Duart said. “They knew something felt off, but they were being told their labs were normal and that this was just what happens. I don’t think women should have to live that way.”
That belief helped lead to Valere, a women’s health business focused on hormone optimization and metabolic care. The name comes from the Latin word meaning “to be strong” or “to be well.”
Vidal-Duart is best known as chief executive officer of CDR Health Care, where her work has included large-scale public health programs and emergency response services. With Valere, the setting is more personal, but the question is similar: What do people need, and how do I build care around that need?
Valere is designed for women navigating perimenopause, menopause and the health changes that often come with midlife. Its approach looks beyond basic lab ranges and considers a woman’s symptoms, medical history, hormone health, metabolism and overall well-being.
For Vidal-Duart, the issue is not that traditional care doesn’t matter. It’s that too many women are leaving appointments without feeling understood.
“There’s a difference between being within a normal range and feeling well,” she said. “Women know their bodies. If something has changed, that deserves more attention than a quick reassurance that everything is normal.”
The conversation around menopause and perimenopause has become more open in recent years, but many women still find themselves piecing together information on their own. They ask friends, listen to podcasts, search online and try to make sense of conflicting advice while continuing to manage families, careers and responsibilities.
Valere was built for that gap.
Its focus on hormone optimization and metabolic care reflects a broader shift in how women are talking about midlife health. The conversation is no longer limited to hot flashes or aging. It now includes energy, sleep, mood, metabolism, brain health, longevity and quality of life.
That is part of what made the opportunity so clear to Vidal-Duart. Women were not looking for a vague promise to feel younger. They were looking for care that treated midlife health as something worth understanding.
“It’s not enough for care to exist somewhere in the system,” Vidal-Duart said. “Women need care that meets them where they are and takes what they are experiencing seriously.”
That idea connects Valere to the larger theme of Vidal-Duart’s career: access to the right care at the right time.
In public health, that has meant building systems that reach people during urgent moments. In women’s midlife health, it means creating a place where women can ask better questions, get a more complete evaluation and feel less alone in the process.
For many women, perimenopause and menopause arrive during some of the busiest years of their lives. They are raising children, building careers, running households, caring for aging parents and making decisions for everyone around them, often while quietly feeling unlike themselves.
Valere is not about treating midlife as something to fix. It is about helping women understand what is happening in their bodies and giving them a more personalized path to feeling better.
That may mean looking more closely at hormones, metabolic markers, sleep, stress, nutrition, lifestyle, medical history and other factors that shape how a woman feels. It may also mean helping women rethink what they have been told they simply have to tolerate.
For Vidal-Duart, the point is straightforward.
Women deserve to be heard.
They deserve better answers.
And they deserve care that helps them feel strong and well.