Bringing Bone Health Care Back to the Center of Women’s Health

SABRE and the Opening of Bone Health’s Next Chapter - Mary Bouxsein, Ph.D.

In this pivotal episode of The Bone Health Basement Tapes, host Peter Bianco is joined by Dr. Mary Bouxsein—Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School and a central leader behind the SABRE initiative—alongside Dr. Shannon Carpenter, founder of The Bone Health Clinic. At the center of the conversation is SABRE (Study to Advance Bone Mineral Density as a Regulatory Endpoint), a landmark effort that has reshaped the future of osteoporosis drug development. Drawing on data from over 50 clinical trials and more than 160,000 patients, SABRE demonstrated that changes in bone mineral density (BMD) can reliably predict fracture risk reduction—paving the way for smaller, faster, and more efficient clinical trials. But this episode goes far beyond regulatory science. Together, the group explores why this moment may represent a true “Big Bang” for bone health—a long-awaited inflection point where innovation, investment, and infrastructure may finally converge. With shorter and less costly trials, the barriers that have stalled new drug development for years may begin to fall, unlocking a new wave of therapies in a field that has seen limited progress since 2019. From the clinical front lines, Dr. Carpenter brings a powerful perspective on the everyday reality of fragility fractures—still vastly underdiagnosed and undertreated despite the availability of effective therapies. The discussion highlights a critical gap: up to 90% of patients remain untreated even after a fracture, underscoring that the challenge is not just innovation, but implementation. The episode also dives into the broader system implications: * How shifting trial design may move the bottleneck from measurement to patient identification * The emerging role of opportunistic imaging and AI in early detection * The growing strain on DXA capacity and the need for alternative screening pathways * The lack of infrastructure and trained providers to manage newly identified patients * The importance of earlier intervention—well before age 65 Perhaps most importantly, the conversation reframes osteoporosis itself—from an inevitable part of aging to a preventable and treatable condition. As Dr. Bouxsein emphasizes, bone health is foundational to longevity: without mobility, healthspan collapses. The episode closes with a forward-looking vision: a future where bone health is assessed earlier, treated proactively, and fully integrated into mainstream healthcare—supported by aligned incentives, better education, and increased public awareness. If SABRE reaches its full potential, this may be the moment the field finally shifts—from reacting to fractures to preventing them.

An Orthopedic Surgeon Builds The Bone Health Clinic with Dr. Shannon Carpenter

Bone health is often addressed only after a fracture occurs, leaving a large gap between scientific knowledge and everyday clinical practice. In this episode of The Bone Health Basement Tapes, we sit down with Dr. Shannon Carpenter, an orthopedic surgeon who took an unconventional path—building a clinical practice dedicated specifically to bone health. Dr. Carpenter founded The Bone Health Clinic to focus on early identification of skeletal risk, comprehensive evaluation, and long-term management of bone health. Rather than treating fractures alone, her model is designed to identify patients at risk before those fractures happen. The conversation explores what led an orthopedic surgeon to move upstream into prevention, the operational realities of building a dedicated bone health practice, and the broader implications for how bone health care may evolve in the coming years. As diagnostic technologies improve and fracture risk becomes more visible earlier in the patient journey, practice models like this may represent an early signal of a larger shift in how skeletal health is delivered. This episode examines what happens when bone health becomes the central focus of a clinical practice—and what that might mean for the future of fracture prevention.

The Biology of Aging Bone - A Conversation with Sundeep Khosla, MD

In this episode of The Bone Health Basement Tapes, we sit down with Dr. Sundeep Khosla — endocrinologist, researcher, and one of the central scientific figures in modern bone health. Dr. Khosla has spent his career at the Mayo Clinic asking foundational questions about why the skeleton ages and fails, and his answers helped change how the field thinks about bone loss in both women and men. His research on sex steroids and skeletal aging revealed that estrogen is not just a female story — it plays a quiet but decisive role in male bone health as well, a finding that reshaped clinical thinking and opened new lines of research. In this conversation, we trace the arc of that scientific journey: how skeletal biology evolved from descriptive observation into molecular and cellular precision, what the field got wrong along the way, and how decades of careful research eventually produced drugs capable of reducing fracture risk by as much as 70%. We also examine the troubling gap between what science achieved and what medicine delivered — including Dr. Khosla's 2016 paper documenting a dramatic collapse in osteoporosis treatment rates at exactly the moment the tools to prevent fractures had never been better. It is a conversation about discovery, about the institutions and mentors that make science possible, and about what happens when a field wins the scientific battle but struggles to translate it into care.

Bringing Bone Health Care Back to the Center of Women’s Health

In this episode of The Bone Health Basement Tapes, we welcome Dr. Kristi Tough DeSapri, founder of Bone & Body Women’s Health, a practice built around a simple but powerful idea: bone health should be central to women’s healthcare—not an afterthought addressed only after risk becomes severe. Dr. DeSapri’s work sits at the intersection of menopause medicine, endocrinology, metabolic health, and skeletal health. Through her practice, she focuses on helping women understand and manage bone health earlier in life—particularly during the midlife hormonal transitions when bone loss often accelerates but remains largely invisible within traditional care pathways. During our conversation, we explore why bone health has historically been fragmented across specialties and how that fragmentation affects patient care. Dr. DeSapri shares her perspective on the importance of addressing skeletal health as part of a broader conversation about longevity, strength, and healthy aging. We also discuss what led her to establish Bone & Body Women’s Health, the kinds of patients she serves, and how an integrated semi-concierge practice model can better connect menopause care, metabolic health, muscle health, and bone density into a single clinical framework. At a time when awareness around menopause and proactive health is rapidly expanding, this conversation highlights why bone health may be entering a new phase of visibility. Practices like Dr. DeSapri’s suggest that skeletal health is beginning to move upstream—becoming part of earlier conversations about prevention, risk, and long-term vitality. For clinicians, this episode offers insight into how bone health can be more thoughtfully integrated into women’s care. For patients, it’s a reminder that understanding bone health earlier in life can play a critical role in maintaining strength, mobility, and independence in the decades ahead.

From Movement to Infrastructure: ASOP’s Evolution and the Bone Health's “Big Bang”

Episode Summary — Basement Tapes Recording (Feb 27, 2026) Speakers: Peter Bianco, Matt Bruns (DNP), Dudley Phipps Core themes: certification, infrastructure, risk visibility, workforce training, collaboration, ecosystem maturation, tech + capital readiness In this episode, Peter, Matt, and Dudley step back from day-to-day tactics to explain what’s changing in the bone health ecosystem—and why the change matters right now. The conversation is framed as a pivot toward maturity, not contraction: after a year-plus of “mapping the ocean floor” (a detailed look at the real-world barriers to scalable osteoporosis care), the team concludes that the work must now split into three distinct but complementary lanes so each can execute with focus. Dudley outlines ASOP’s primary lane: standardized training and subspecialty certification to build a credible, scalable workforce infrastructure for bone health. The group argues that guidelines alone aren’t enough—without a recognized certification pathway and competence standard, bone health remains “the Wild West,” limiting policy leverage, reimbursement clarity, and repeatable clinic operations. Matt emphasizes certification as a practical signal to both patients and referring providers: in a space where “no one owns” osteoporosis across the lifespan, certification helps identify true subject-matter expertise and improves referral accuracy. Peter connects this organizational maturation to the broader “Big Bang” thesis for the season: the field is moving from disease visibility (reacting after fracture) toward risk visibility (identifying and managing fracture risk across the lifespan). They discuss how current care remains too event-driven—“conception to death” prevention requires a wider lens that also elevates adjacent “orphan” domains like fall risk and nutrition, which demand training and workflow ownership. A second lane emerging from their work is the role of The Bone Health Basement Tapes itself: what started as an experiment to “shout into the canyon” has become a surprisingly strong signal of demand, with growing downloads and inbound interest. The team positions the show as more than a podcast—an ecosystem convening channel that supports the cultural and informational infrastructure needed for change. The third lane is the “outside-the-society” execution layer: Peter describes the move toward Bone Health Media and a more analytic platform approach—including the developing Bone Health Index—to provide the “speedometer and temperature gauge” the sector lacks. The idea is to make bone health legible not only to clinicians, but to investors, employers, and technology builders who currently don’t have a clear entry point into the vertical. The episode closes with a direct call for collaboration across societies and stakeholders, arguing that clearly defined lanes make collaboration easier—and that without greater cooperation and serious infrastructure investment, the field won’t move the numbers that have been stagnant for decades. Bottom line: This episode is a “state of the mission” reset—positioning certification, media/convening, and execution infrastructure as coordinated pillars for scaling fracture prevention, attracting investment, and shifting the field from reactive care to lifecycle risk management.