# IIRRM Congress 2026 in Orlando: Pre-Conference Courses _By Naomi Whittaker, MD · Published: 2026-09-23_ The default model of fertility care treats a woman's fertility like a switch. Suppressive medications turn the cycle off for years. Later, an expensive procedure is asked to turn conception back on. It has run that way for sixty years, like an appliance. In between, the question of why the cycle stopped working can go unasked. Restorative reproductive medicine asks it first, and then measures the answer. RRM reads the ovulatory cycle as a vital sign and works up the whole woman and her partner before anyone reaches for a treatment. It's pro-ovulation in the measurable sense: ovulation is a marker of health, so it gets tracked like one rather than suppressed or circumvented. That science is still being built, in public, by the clinicians and researchers doing the work. This October, for four days in Orlando, IIRRM switches the model. ## Who runs the RRM congress in Orlando? The International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine runs it. IIRRM is an independent professional body with its own faculty, its own scientific program, and its own accreditation. RRM Academy doesn't own the congress and doesn't organize it. We go the way everyone else goes. Start with the institute itself at [iirrm.org](https://iirrm.org/). ## Why is this the future of reproductive medicine? Because it's being built the way a new field gets built, in the open and on the record: a professional institute with a board and standing committees, a peer-reviewed journal, a research registry, clinical practice guidelines, and an accredited annual congress now in its third decade. Physicians from Canada, Ireland and the UK first met in November 2000 to form it, later joined by colleagues from Australia and the United States. The institute, its members and its work live at [iirrm.org](https://iirrm.org/). The institute's stated mission is to advance excellence in restorative reproductive medicine by supporting practice and research through mentorship, education and collaboration. Its own definition of the clinical work is compact: RRM clinicians focus investigations and treatments on correcting abnormalities, rather than suppressing, destroying or bypassing normal function. It publishes the Journal of Restorative Reproductive Medicine, runs the STORRM research registry, and holds live CME webinars and journal clubs in English, Spanish and Ukrainian. The congress is the scientific meeting of that body: a call for abstracts, accepted posters and presentations, and CME accreditation through the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education and the American Academy of Family Physicians. The literature is published and findable. A 2025 paper in the Journal of Restorative Reproductive Medicine sets out the discipline ([Understanding Restorative Reproductive Medicine](https://rrmacademy.org/library/understanding-restorative-reproductive-medicine-recu1z1xulr6qtn2a/)); another covers its surgical arm ([Surgery in Restorative Reproductive Medicine](https://rrmacademy.org/library/surgery-in-restorative-reproductive-medicine-rec9rblusdodmz3uy/)). Outcome cohorts are in the journals too: a 2025 retrospective cohort in Frontiers in Reproductive Health reported take-home baby rates and diagnoses for 1,310 couples at one Spanish clinic over five years ([Sánchez-Méndez and colleagues](https://rrmacademy.org/library/natural-procreative-technology-naprotechnology-for-infertility-take-home-baby-ra-recv02qu0r8ycnzoa/)). Every scientific advance runs on instruments. The industrial revolution moved on machines that made work measurable and repeatable. This one moves on instruments that make the cycle measurable: charting that produces a daily record, lab work timed to the cycle rather than to the calendar, and surgery that goes looking for disease instead of ruling it out from a clean scan. Measure something and you can study it. Study it and you can treat it. The innovation is scientific and simple. This medicine is built on the female body as it actually works, with the ovulatory cycle measured and treated as a vital sign, instead of on a male-default body in which the cycle reads as a defect to be switched off. That's the new face of reproductive medicine: a woman seen as a whole person, in every dimension of her health, and never as a machine with a switch or a baby factory with an output. ## What do the 2026 pre-conference courses teach? Four courses run October 7 and 8, ahead of the main program. Each answers something standard care gets wrong. **Endometriosis: From Pathogenesis to Clinical Essentials.** Two days, directed by Natalia Suszczewicz and Krzysztof Gałczyński. Standard care suppresses the symptom and lets the disease keep going, which is part of why so many women wait years for a diagnosis. Day one covers where the disease comes from, how it looks on imaging, and how it's operated on. Day two is hands-on ultrasound training. A clinician who can see the disease before the incision is a clinician who can take it out. **Hormone Masterclass for Women's Care.** One day, with PCCA. Standard practice tends to reach for one prescribing pattern regardless of what an individual woman's physiology is doing. This course works through estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and thyroid together, reads them against cardiovascular, bone and metabolic health, then runs cases. Progesterone is the hormone most often left out of that conversation, and it only reaches meaningful levels because ovulation happened. **3rd International Meeting of Fertility Educators & CARE Team.** October 7, for educators, nurses, midwives, RRM coaches and allied health staff. Most fertility care never asks to see a woman's own cycle record, so it works without the one dataset she already has. Reproductive medicine practiced that way is flying blind. This meeting treats the chart as a diagnostic tool and works through real example charts, alongside sessions on building the care team and on the couple relationship. **RRM in Practice: Foundations and Clinical Applications.** October 8, hosted by NeoFertility. In standard care, "unexplained infertility" ends the workup. Unexplained infertility is undiagnosed infertility, and this course opens the workup there instead. It teaches a three-phase clinical framework and goes deep on endometritis, the microbiome and thyroid function, through real case studies. Those are the findings that go missing when a couple is told nothing is wrong. ## What's on the main congress program for October 9 and 10? Two days of research sessions. The titles show the shape of this medicine. Four are on male factor: diagnosis and treatment, hormonal treatment, varicocele embolization, and the genetic and epigenetic factors behind it. Standard practice runs one semen analysis and then routes around the man. Here he gets evaluated and treated. Three take on mechanical infertility, including interventional radiology for tubal obstruction and fallopian tube surgery. Blocked tubes get a surgical answer. Three take on endometriosis: surgical options together with adhesion prevention, the real effect of surgery on infertility, and how to reduce miscarriage risk in women who have it. Excision is the standard worth training for, and the adhesion prevention that follows it is half the operation. Then the rest of the woman. A thyroid guideline update. Nutrition and gut health in polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS / PCOS) and in endometriosis. Pain with sex, evaluated rather than endured. The history and current practice of testing and treating low progesterone. Prevention of pregnancy loss from aneuploidy. Chronic histiocytic intervillositis, a rare placental disorder where the mother's immune cells move into the placenta and raise the risk of miscarriage and stillbirth. ## Why does a research congress matter if you're the patient? Because the clinicians who train here are the ones who look for the cause. Reading the cycle as a vital sign already has mainstream backing. ACOG published a committee opinion saying exactly that in 2015 ([ACOG Committee Opinion No. 651](https://rrmacademy.org/library/acog-committee-opinion-no-651-menstruation-in-girls-and-adolescents-using-the-me-recwnkz9cmxxz7f5b/)), and a 2025 review in F&S Reviews worked through the evidence again ([Vollmar and colleagues](https://rrmacademy.org/library/the-menstrual-cycle-as-a-vital-sign-a-comprehensive-review-qHEwFSNO/)). Building a whole medicine around it is what four days like these are for. When I was in practice, women walked into my office after years of being told their cycles were fine and their infertility was unexplained. Someone has to be trained, and willing, to keep looking. At the ovulatory cycle. At the hormones. At the disease an ultrasound didn't show. At her partner. You won't be in that room. Your clinician might be, or the clinician you haven't met yet. These are the doctors the RRM Care Directory is being built to help women find. You can help build it at [rrmacademy.org/providers/](https://rrmacademy.org/providers/). ## What is RRM Academy bringing to the congress? A booth, and the team to staff it. Come say hello. The Save the Uterus Club mascots will be at the table for photos and pre-orders. Our team will also be demoing Ask RRM Academy, the AI answer tool we built on the research library. Bring a question you've never gotten a straight answer to and see what comes back. We'll point people to the RRM Care Directory too, the piece of our work that matters most to a patient. If you can't make it to Florida, the Save the Uterus Club is the standing version of the same room: live calls with guest speakers, and women and clinicians who take this seriously. Join at [rrmacademy.org/save-the-uterus-club](https://rrmacademy.org/save-the-uterus-club/). ## When and where is the 2026 IIRRM congress in Orlando? **The 2026 International Clinical & Scientific Congress for Restorative Reproductive Medicine, run by IIRRM. Everything practical, in one place.** | Item | Detail | | ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Dates | October 7 to 10, 2026 | | Pre-conference courses | October 7 and 8 | | Main congress | October 9 and 10 | | Venue | Marriott Orlando Airport Lakeside, Orlando, Florida | | Ways to attend | In person, live online, a combination of the two, or a CME recording package | | CME | Up to 29.5 credits, accredited through the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education and the American Academy of Family Physicians | | Last day to register | September 30 | | The institute | [iirrm.org](https://iirrm.org/), the International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine | | Follow IIRRM | Instagram @international\_irrm, X @IIRRMedicine, Facebook @RestorativeReproductiveMedicine | [Register for the 2026 RRM Congress](https://rrmcongress.com/congress-registration/) _Cover photo: Seattle Municipal Archives, "Woman in kitchen, 1958," via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0._ --- Source: https://rrmacademy.org/commentary/iirrm-congress-orlando-2026/