For the past six years I have witnessed my mother endure difficulties such as having to adjust the pre menopausal symptoms, debating to take hormones to control her hot flashes, and coping with other emotional and physical issues. The first three years shewas not able to easily understand what menopause was. Often she received quick ten minute lectures on the subject in the waiting room from nurses and doctors. Due to the lack of adequate information from her health care, which is an HMO, she often stressed over hot flashes because of its’ persistence and severity. She was unaware of this symptom’s regularity which made her visit the doctor occasionally. If she would have been better informed by her doctor and probably had a Spanish speaking doctor, it would have helped. Also, if her health insurance had provide programs or meetings for middle-aged Latinas this could have been a wonderful support system that would have nourishedher emotions and enabled her ability to cope with menopause. Currently she is taking medication to control her hot flashes; she chose not to use hormones because according toher friends and television hormones have many negative effects and can cause cancer. As for dealing with menopause, she has taught herself to manage with menopause. One of the advantages of my mother having health insurance is she can change doctors, howevershe never finds a local Spanish speaking doctor, instead I translate for her. Contemplating the hardships my mother has endured I wanted to seek research onother middle-aged Latinas. I wanted to find how much their circumstances differ and what kinds of difficulties they endure from health services. Therefore, I chose to focus onmenopausal symptoms of middle-aged Latina/Hispanic women and if there is any relevance to the services they are provided by health services.Before I continue on I want to clarify the terminology used to identify Spanish-speaking women. Lee’s article the women self-identified themselves as Latina that refers to woman of Latin-America or Spanish speaking descent Reynoso’s article the women self-identified themselves as Latino American which refers to an American citizen or resident of Latin-American or Spanish speaking descent. Stellato’s article women self described their primary racal or ethnic group as Hispanic which refers to someone from Spain or Spanish-speaking Latin America. Stellato’s article focuses on finding common menopausal status and symptoms among different racial/ethnic groups. I primary focused on the Hispanic outcomes. Although the study divided the women into different menopausal status such as surgical menopause, combined early and late preimenopausal together, and premenopausal, I focused on the overall total of the entire Hispanic group rather than focusing on each individual group. Based on Table 1 hormone use was lowest for Hispanics compared to Caucasian women due to the fact that hormone use is related to race/ethnicity. The resultsalso found that Hispanic women are more likely to have had a surgical menopause than Chinese and Japanese women. It can be presumed that Hispanic women are less likely to have hormone use to the lack of funds. Table 1 shows that out of the 1859 Hispanic participation at least 75 percent which is more than half of participates had somewhat or very difficulty to pay for basics. Table 1 also states that the highest percentage of self-assessed health for Hispanic women was between fair and good. How can these women have such a high percentage of good health considering that more than half have difficulty with paying for services? Could it be a matter on the participant’s perception ontheir own health? Such like the Latina women in Lee’s study that found in the first yearLatinas were more likely to self-report fair or poor health perceptions. Probably in Stellato’s study the participants over the phone gave their perception on their health like the women in Lee’s study rather than consulting their personal physician for an accurate assessment on their health. In Table 2 the three common symptoms found among Hispanic women were tension (60.1%), depression (51.8%), and headaches (53.2%). A woman can not be depressed and be considered healthy she needs to be both physically healthy as well as emotionally. The study was conducted in community-based areas in theUnited States including Los Angeles, but it does not specify in what kind of area of the Los Angeles the 15-mintue questionnaire was conducted. Lee’s study found depressive symptom’s for Latinas to be similar to White women in a period of six months along having higher body weight increase than White women in twelve months, and engaging in higher activity levels in service or agricultural services. Another finding of this study is that more than half of Latina pariticpants had gone to high school or completed higher education such as college. As for report income more than half reported $31,000-$60,999 that does not specifiy if this is before or after