Lynette Medley and Nya McGlone on Galentine’s Day in the Breonna Taylor Safe Room. (Photo: Rasheed Z. Ajamu)
A 2021 survey revealed that one in three low-income women (18+) reported missing work, school, or similar commitments due to a lack of access to period supplies. Going into 2020, access disparities widened when COVID-19 shut the world down.
Around the same time, mother-daughter duo Lynette Medley and Nya McGlone opened The SPOT Period Hub on Feb. 20, 2021, creating the nation’s first menstrual hub and uterine wellness center, right here in Germantown.
Since then, The SPOT has provided menstrual products; access to a safe space with water, clean toilets, resting spaces, and Wi-Fi; workshops and educational programming; and general outreach. Today, they celebrate five years of being open.
For Medley, just staying open is a big win.
“We’re still self-funded, mostly, and we’re two Black women really doing work that people aren’t doing,” she says.
The biggest win, though, she says, is still serving the community.
“I think sometimes people lose focus and lose their mission. You ever see that people start one way and then it’s like, where’s the community? What are you doing anymore? It’s just like they get so big they forget what they’re supposed to be doing. And I think we’ve stayed very intentional about meeting the needs of our communities, creating more spaces that are accessible and welcoming to our community.”
Beyond their Germantown site, The SPOT has expanded. A partnership with Jefferson Health Plans led to a Period Pantry at Jefferson’s community wellness center at 6232 Market St. They have started satellite hubs at colleges, including Temple University. And to provide services and resources on the go, they launched a mobile menstrual health clinic.
And it’s still just Medley and McGlone as the foundation, with volunteers and others providing the structure.
The same 2021 survey revealed that of the 2,672,649 women and girls, ages 12 to 44, who live in Pennsylvania, one in seven lives below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL).
In PA, elected officials have worked to address menstrual equity issues.
The PA Department of Health invested $3 million in the 2025-2026 state budget to provide free period products for students across Pennsylvania’s schools, intermediate units, technical centers, and charter schools.
198th District State Rep. Darisha Parker is the sponsor of two bills working through the state legislature. One seeks to strengthen access to menstrual products by allowing people who are eligible for SNAP and WIC to use waivers to access menstrual products. The other would establish the Menstrual Hygiene Products Accessibility Grant Program.
Rep. Parker has prioritized menstrual health and equity during her time in office, making it a point to keep her colleagues aware and informed about the issues around menstruation.
“God bless Lynette and her daughter for spearheading this movement. And it cannot be duplicated because of the institutional knowledge, the training, the expertise that they have,” said Parker.
She would love national recognition for the work that Medley and McGlone do, along with federal funding and policy support that would back up the work that she and The SPOT do.
Parker points out that menstrual equity is not just about the menstrual cycle but the entire cycle of the uterus and uterine health. Medley makes this point as well.
Medley says The SPOT has catered to people as young as eight or nine years old and people who are past 50. She says it’s important to realize that it’s about the entire life cycle of a person with a uterus, including perimenopause and menopause. All of these issues are addressed at The SPOT.
Medley said one thing that stands out to her in the last five years is that menstrual equity and period poverty aren’t just a “poor people issue.” She has seen folks come in for products and services because of uterine problems and medical issues, and they didn’t know what to do about it.
“We don’t have a system of care around uterine health and wellness. And I think that’s where we kind of fall void on being able to deal with issues around periods,” said Medley.
“And they suffer in silence for years because people might give them a pad or a tampon, but (they) never really understand why they might be bleeding so much or why they’re having these heavy ongoing periods. And I just feel like there’s still a gap in our society. So I felt like a physical space was so important.”
Volunteer Doniella McKoy agrees about how impactful an actual physical location is when it comes to the education and resources that The SPOT provides.
McKoy volunteered for the org for the first time this past MLK Day, and returned to volunteer on “Galentine’s Day,” a celebration of women, girls, and friendship usually held right before Valentine’s Day.
McKoy appreciates what Medley and her daughter do and sees the impacts, noting lines of people at the front door ahead of opening for resources and services.
“It’s so monumental to have this institution here, to make it so that it can be in our regular conversations and that women have somewhere to go,” McKoy said, reflecting on how The SPOT fills a need in the community.
“When women are safe and have their comfort and their needs met, they’re allowed to do what they need to in the community as well,” McKoy continued. “So supporting this population in particular will always spread to other parts of the community.”
Medley says that no matter what, she and McGlone are going to continue being community-oriented, mentioning that they have had different lived experiences that call them to this work, even when it is difficult.
As she reflects on the last five years, she has been surprised by the demographic shift in who they have served.
It started as a period poverty issue, but she says the need has grown. Medley cites serving gainfully employed individuals unable to afford period products alongside their bills and utilities.
The SPOT gives people six months’ worth of products at a time. Medley dismisses the approach she sees where organizations may give out a small bag of products at a time, saying it’s not helpful for people.
Health systems and other organizations are also referring The SPOT to discharged patients after birth or procedures because of the at-home shortage of menstrual & uterine products.
Recently, women came in for products because of deployment and said it would cost them about $3,000 to get products ahead of time, and they were not able to access them regularly once they were deployed.
It’s circumstances like this that make Medley glad they are able to come through for people, but she feels like these stories need to be talked about more.
Medley and her daughter joke that if they had to talk to themselves five years ago, they might say, “Don’t do it!” But they committed to it, and Medley says even though she would love to see more financial support and more in-kind donations from large corporations, they know that whoever they were supposed to help, they did it—even if money and donations run out.
One of Medley’s dreams is for medical institutions and facilities “to look at this as a system of care and create an infrastructure within their institutions to address this issue.”
She envisions a more self-contained system where a doctor, nurse, or other health professional can see someone and connect them to get immediate resources in partnership with The SPOT. She has seen people at The SPOT who are bleeding so heavily that they needed emergency care, and believes more collaborative relationships would make it easier to help people.
“So I really think that’s what I would want to happen, that we really created that community where uterine and menstrual care and the health system were connected,” says Medley.
As Medley reflects in the foreground, her daughter Nya stays busy in the back. It hasn’t always been easy, and in the current political atmosphere, they have had to increase the privacy of their work.
Medley says her family and her partner see the vision she’s always had, and sometimes it seems like it isn’t going to happen. But she says she can see it happening already, in other ways. She gives examples of how health care systems are now collaborating with food pantries to make that a part of their public health approach.
“We still have a lot of work to do. We’ve done a lot in five years, but there’s still a lot more work to do. And we would love it if other people will come along with us to do this work,” adds Nya, quietly, in the background.
Maleka Fruean is Germantown Info Hub’s community organizer, a writer, and mother of four, all raised in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. She has a B.A. in journalism from Temple University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from St. Joseph’s University, and uses both to embrace the power of stories.