Heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB), clinically defined as “excessive menstrual blood loss which interferes with a woman’s physical, emotional, social, and/or material quality of life,” is a major cause of iron deficiency anemia and leads to significant impairment of health-related quality of life and functioning among women and girls of reproductive age. The long-term goal of this work is to quantify the contribution of menstrual blood loss to the global burden of anemia and to develop contextually appropriate interventions based on this evidence. As a first step towards that goal, our team validated a survey instrument to measure HMB and, in the process, generated data on the prevalence of HMB across populations in low- and middle-income countries. In addition, we used the survey data to examine associations between HMB and health outcomes (e.g., depression symptomology) as well as sanitation-specific factors that may predict HMB.