Dr. Sara Twogood

Dr. Twogood arrived at medicine by following a series of small but decisive steps. A science-oriented student at University of California Santa Barbara, she soon realized medicine was a career that interested her, and began shadowing an obstetrician-gynecologist at her university’s student health center to learn the work from the inside out. “Everything just kept pushing me toward this career,” she says. “Every step along the way, I knew I was making the right choice.”

She chose obstetrics and gynecology because the field offered something few specialties can: one physician who is both the patient’s medical doctor and her surgeon. That ability to stay with women and help them optimize their health at each phase of life has remained a throughline in her career. “I love taking care of women exclusively, and I love having that continuity with my patients,” Dr. Twogood says.

After earning her medical degree from Albany Medical College, Dr. Twogood completed her internship and residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Los Angeles County + University of Southern California (now LA General Hospital).

She then joined the faculty of USC’s Keck School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology and served as an OB/GYN there, helping build the first general OB/GYN practice for Keck Medicine.

In 2019, Dr. Twogood joined Cedars-Sinai Medical Group, where her clinical work again spanned the full spectrum of OB/GYN care, treating pregnant patients, delivering babies, and caring for general gynecology needs. Over the course of her career, she developed particular expertise in perimenopause and menopause management, sexual health, libido, preconception care, and fertility optimization—areas she sees as pivotal transition points in women’s lives.

“There are two phases of a woman’s life I find especially meaningful,” Dr. Twogood says. “The perimenopause and menopause years, where there’s so much potential to educate patients and help them feel better and live better, and the preconception period, when a woman’s health often becomes a main focus. Those are huge moments of transition. Helping women through them, even when there isn’t a problem, has an enormous impact on their future health and happiness.”

Dr. Twogood recognizes the relationship between gynecologists and their patients carries a unique intimacy. She creates a warm, judgment-free environment where her patients can bring any question or concern to their conversations. “There’s something very special about an OB/GYN’s relationship with her patient,” Dr. Twogood says. “So often, people have discussions they don’t feel comfortable having with anyone or anywhere else, and I’m honored that my patients trust me to help them navigate those moments.”

That same commitment extends beyond the exam room. Dr. Twogood has dedicated much of her career to educating women about their bodies and cutting through the thickets of information and misinformation about women’s health online and in popular culture. To this end, she co-founded Female Health Education, an organization that offers sexual health workshops for adolescents and adults, including a comprehensive virtual course on sexual wellness. “When we started this eight years ago, menopause and sexual health was not being talked about very much,” Dr. Twogood says. “Every patient who completed the course was floored by the information.” Dr. Twogood also regularly writes and lectures about women’s health, and has provided medical expertise for the Flo period and pregnancy-tracking app for years.

Now Dr. Twogood finds many patients are more informed about menopause and women’s health, but still have plenty of questions. She monitors social media closely to understand what people are reading and seeing, and often helps reframe the conversation around what solutions might work for their specific health goals and needs. “It’s a wild time in medicine, where people are inundated with information but don’t always get the context,” she says. “I stay open, listen to their questions, and help each person interpret the medical literature in terms of how it applies to them.”

At Atria, Dr. Twogood enjoys working with colleagues across specialties because they can all work together to answer patients’ questions and care for them from a multidisciplinary perspective. “The collaborative care is ingrained in the system at Atria and is the baseline expectation,” she says. "By default, it makes you look at the patient as a whole instead of the medical silos in many traditional health care settings. I feel privileged to be part of that.”

Dr. Twogood lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children. The family loves to travel, and she enjoys introducing her children to new cultures and experiences. In addition to her work consulting as a medical expert on several women’s health apps and publications, Dr. Twogood also enjoys reading, making jewelry, and crafting candles.