Endometriosis Explained is a 90-minute educational film featuring the world’s leading medical experts on Endometriosis

Since you are here, you have probably experienced painful periods or have been diagnosed with Endometriosis. As many of you will know, finding trustworthy information online can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

That is why we are bringing together 10 of the world’s leading medical experts on endometriosis to create a 90-minute film that provides you with all the information you need to take control and move forward.

For the first time, anyone will be able to easily access the vast knowledge of medical experts that have collectively treated tens of thousands of people with Endometriosis and related conditions.

With the support of the global endometriosis community, we are creating the most comprehensive and easily accessible source of trustworthy information about Endometriosis.

Read on to find out how we are going to do it - and why we need your support!

Why are we making this film?

Endometriosis is a complex disease that affects the whole body. Unfortunately, many unanswered questions remain about it and its related conditions. Endometriosis is also underprioritised in most medical systems around the world as it is often dismissed as “just a painful period” or a “woman’s disease”.

As many of you will have experienced, it can be difficult to find a medical professional that will take your symptoms seriously, let alone one that will be able to accurately diagnose you. And as difficult as a diagnosis can be to obtain, finding a true endometriosis specialist to provide you the treatment you need is even harder. Knowing what questions to ask and what treatment is right for you before consulting with a specialist can be the key to finding the help that you need.

That is why we are bringing together 10 of the world’s leading medical experts on Endometriosis. These experts come from all over the world and cover all major medical disciplines. Collectively, they have treated tens of thousands of people like you.

With true experts being so few and far between, access to care from one of these specialists is something most people can only dream of. These medical professionals have dedicated their careers to helping rid people of this debilitating disease, and have made it their life’s mission to help as many people as possible. Endometriosis Explained is helping them achieve this goal by making their knowledge accessible to everyone in one 90-minute educational film.

Using their collective knowledge, our educational film will focus on the many Endometriosis-related questions that can be answered. Instead of just raising awareness of the problem, our film will provide you with a complete overview of what is known about Endometriosis today.

Who are we making this film for?

Endometriosis Explained is an educational film for anyone affected by or interested in Endometriosis or a related condition. Whether you just started experiencing painful periods, have recently been diagnosed, or have been experiencing symptoms for many years, this film is for you.

This film is for people who:

• Would like a comprehensive source of information on Endometriosis
• Want to hear directly from the world’s leading medical experts on Endometriosis
• Are not being believed or understood by their friends and family
• Need support explaining Endometriosis to their gynaecologist or general practitioner
• Are interested in learning about the latest medical breakthroughs in this field
• People who want to better understand what their loved ones are going through

By supporting this crowdfunding campaign you will be amongst the first people to receive a copy of this educational film when it launches.

Why you should watch this film

There are already a great many documentaries out there that play an important role in raising awareness about Endometriosis in society and medical systems around the world. These documentaries have helped to break taboos and started an important global dialogue about Endometriosis that will hopefully help generations to come.

We believe that the next chapter for Endometriosis lies in providing education. That is what inspired us to create an educational film that will give you evidence-based information from world-leading experts that will allow you to speak and act with confidence in your knowledge about the disease. It may be a cliché, but there is no denying that Knowledge is Power!

Endometriosis Explained will provide you with a complete overview of what is currently known about Endometriosis, as well as insights into the latest breakthroughs in diagnostics and treatments available worldwide. The hard truth is that not all treatment options will be accessible to everyone watching this film. And although access to care is a huge and serious issue, we believe that every person should know what the gold standard of treatment is for their condition, in order to be able to make informed decisions about their healthcare.

What the film will cover

• How to find out if you have Endometriosis, Adenomyosis or related conditions
• How symptoms typically develop over time
• How Endometriosis can impact fertility
• How to avoid possible complications
• How to manage your pain effectively
• The currently available treatment options

Quality of information

With the sheer amount of sources available online, distinguishing good information from bad information can be very difficult and time consuming. Unfortunately when it comes to Endometriosis, there is still a lot of misinformation being spread. The dangers of making health-related decisions based on information from unreliable sources can not be understated.

This is exactly the reason why the educational film Endometriosis Explained is bringing together the world’s leading medical experts on Endometriosis. To create a single go-to source of information that is uniting the knowledge of the most experienced medical professionals in the field of Endometriosis and making it accessible in an affordable and easily digestible format.

Of course, even amongst the most experienced medical professionals, there are different opinions, perspectives, and even biases.

These three steps enable us to ensure that the educational film provides a complete, balanced and unbiased overview of perspectives and opinions:

1. We start by identifying the leading medical experts on Endometriosis all around the world. See the next section “Expert Selection Process” below for details on this process.

2. We ensure that all major medical disciplines are represented by the experts featured in and/ or responsible for informing the content of the documentary.

3. We include experts from different countries and different medical institutions around the world in order to avoid any form of political bias that one single institution may have.

Expert selection process

Unfortunately there aren’t any regulations defining which medical professionals get to call themselves an Endometriosis expert and who doesn’t. Because of this, it's hard to differentiate between someone who calls themselves an expert and treats 1-2 patients a month, and a true expert that sees dozens of patients every week.

This means that we could not just include anyone in this educational film based on their own testimony of their expertise. Instead, we decided that we needed a vetting process in order to identify true Endometriosis experts around the world.

Working with board-certified patient-advocates, we have found that the following criteria can help you identify a true Endometriosis expert:

• Working in or running an institution that primarily focuses on Endometriosis
• Working exclusively with endometriosis patients 
• Has a multidisciplinary team for handling cases involving bowel, bladder and any extra pelvic endometriosis incl. diaphragmatic endometriosis.  
• If they are a surgeon, they should be performing Endometriosis related surgery multiple times a week
• Able to provide images for review
• Accredited with a fellowship in minimally invasive surgery for at least two years

To help us identify true Endometriosis experts in many different countries, we have enlisted the help of patient associations around the world.

Patient associations exist in most countries and are run by people with Endometriosis who have made it their purpose to (1) provide help and support to anyone in need locally and (2) to provide recommendations to their members to help them seek out the best experts and treatments in their country.

Because of this, patient associations are receiving feedback from their members about different medical experts in their country on a daily basis. This puts them in a unique position to deduce which “Experts” truly are the best in their country, not just based on credentials, but based on the actual lived experience of patients.

Over the last months, we have established partnerships with patient associations and community organisations in more than 25 countries.

These associations have helped us identify and shortlist over 120 Endometriosis experts around the world.

Knowing that we have to account for different standards of treatment that vary from country to country, we are now working with community leaders and board-certified patient-advocates to cross-reference and filter the expert list. This process is helping us to identify the world’s top experts in each of the different disciplines that we are looking to include in the educational film.

Over the coming weeks, we will be finalising a shortlist of the most referenced and recommended experts in each medical discipline from different countries around the world to include in the educational film.

Timeline

The pre-production for Endometriosis Explained started in 2022. Up until this point, our team has been busy behind the scenes, working with Endometriosis patient associations, independendent community leaders and patient advocates, Endometriosis -related research projects and other individuals and organisations that had valuable perspectives and insights to share.

With the launch of our crowdfunding campaign, we are now looking to engage with you, the people we are making this educational film for! As a backer of the crowdfunding campaign you will have the opportunity to ask questions and get answers from our medical experts directly here on the our crowdfunding platform.

You will also be able to give input on the content of the film throughout production. So that we can make sure that as many of your questions as possible are covered in it.

Meet our founder

I couldn’t get the answers I needed, so I started researching myself. I spent hundreds of hours reading and reaching out to the world’s leading medical experts. Eventually, I was diagnosed with Endometriosis.

If only I’d known back then what I do now.

And that is why we’re making the film Endometriosis Explained. For people like you and me who want their questions answered, by experts they can trust. If you or someone you know have had suffering dismissed as ‘just a painful period’, you‘ll know why what we’re doing is so important.