#WCW: Afton Vechery, CEO of Modern Fertility: Navigating Fertility Through COVID-19
My questions around fertility span from “Is that something I have to deal with?” all the way to “Is using my laptop in bed all the time frying my eggs?” Modern Fertility’s CEO Afton Vechery is here to help me start that conversation. Modern Fertility is a unique, direct-to-consumer healthcare company that offers the only comprehensive fertility hormone test that can be taken at home. Patients can take the fertility hormone test at home and get results that help them start a conversation about family planning with their doctor. Customers can also access 1:1 consultation with a fertility nurse or join a weekly “Egginar” to get information.
Afton understands that when it comes to complicated issues like fertility and family planning, women want specifics and in light of a terrifying pandemic, that demand is even higher. However, there are no clear cut answers when it comes to a pandemic nor fertility, let alone the intersection of the two. So Modern Fertility provides research-backed information and stories that resonate, so women can make decisions based on the best possible information and feel they’re not alone in family planning in a world where planning seems impossible. I talked to Afton about COVID-19’s effect on her customers as well as the other obstacles women face when it comes to fertility. Fertility still seems like an opaque black box my future self will have to navigate but Modern Fertility makes me confident I’ll find some illumination.
Q: You recently released a report that talked about how COVID-19 is affecting family planning, what were some of the results you found?
A: We did a lot of research on fertility and COVID-19 as part of our Modern State of Fertility report, which we released every year for National Infertility Awareness Week. We always pick a key part of fertility that needs more research and more conversation. There are so many areas of fertility that are under-researched, and ultimately, information is power — so we aim to bring more data and insights to a space that can otherwise be very ambiguous and isolating. Since we launched, we have heard about just how much our careers and finances are tied to fertility and family planning decisions — the trade-off can seem endless and are only becoming more complicated.
So we partnered with SoFi and surveyed thousands of people with ovaries all across the US. We had just wrapped up the report before COVID-19 became what it is now in the U.S., and we realized the topics of careers and money had vastly changed in just a few weeks. So we reached back out to our respondents to find out if the pandemic had affected their family planning, with regard to money and careers, since they first responded. We found that almost one third of the women had changed their fertility or family planning decisions plans due to COVID-19. For 18% of respondents of these women, it’s because their fertility clinics were closed.
We found that one of the main COVID-19 related reasons why women were delaying their timeline was the same reason women delay their timeline in general — finances, not fertility itself. Concerns about finances are heightened with so much uncertainty while people are losing their jobs. The biggest trend we saw before coronavirus was somewhat exacerbated by the impact that the pandemic has had on people’s lives.
Q: Can you tell me about how your company is thinking about COVID’s effect on your customers?
A: Every company is faring differently. The number one thing that women were reaching out to us about was questions about what this all means for fertility and can we help them think through it. We started Modern Fertility as a fertility information company so that women can own the decisions impacting their bodies and futures — whatever those decisions may be. Day one, we invested in building out our Medical Advisory Board and creating clinically rigorous content. We’re now in a position where we have all the resources to be able to speak to industry guidelines, be on top of all of the information and cut through the speculation and talk about real data, real recommendations, and real science. We have a relationship with our customers where we’re able to reach out and provide resources that meet women where they are. We hosted a series of online Q&As and webinars with OB/GYNs, reproductive psychologists and Reproductive Endocrinologists and saw thousands of RSVPs. We have our planned content but we can never get through all the Q&A, we could go for hours.
Q: What are some of the challenges involved in giving advice during this pandemic?
A: I think one thing that’s challenging right now, and in healthcare in general, is that people want precise answers. But with fertility, there is a lot of ambiguity. With coronavirus, that is even more pronounced. A lot of women are looking for answers — but fertility isn’t black and white. A key part of our brand is neutrality, where we never push her towards a certain fertility outcome or solution. In some ways, navigating fertility can be navigating COVID-19 — there’s a lot of uncertainty and we wish we had more information, but get comfort knowing that we’re making the best decisions we can based off of the best information that’s available.
That’s also something that we found when doing the Modern State of Fertility Report.
With fertility decisions and with financial decisions, there’s no clear right answer. It’s about collecting data and being informed, then it’s making the decisions that you think are right for you. If we can be a part of that unbiased information collection, then that’s where we want to be.
A recent college graduate with their careers ahead of them is not going to be super helpful for me. I want to talk with other female founders. I want to really dive in and see how they plan through things. I want to hear anecdotes and stories from people like me. I think that that is what we’re able to talk about in the Modern Fertility community. You can look at these specific career tracks and specific areas and see what resonates and what doesn’t.
Q: How did you go about building a brand that women could look to as a community and support around fertility?
A: When we were starting Modern Fertility we knew that we had to have something that women wanted to consume. Fertility hasn’t traditionally been a consumer industry category, we knew had to be trusted and supportive of her unique fertility decisions — whatever they may be. Our brand voice is that of an “OB/GYN who is also your reproductive health sherpa and your best friend.” But our clinical voice comes from several doctors on our Medical Advisory Boards and is based on numerous research papers, so this friendly voice is really an aggregation of different experts that comes to the best center point of it all, rather than a single medical perspective.
Our clinical content and personalized fertility reports provide all of the information and clinical guidelines, but presented in a digestible way that resonates, so she can make those decisions for yourself.
When I was first starting Modern Fertility, I was spending 15 hours a day reading scientific publications and familiarizing myself with the data. We emphasize that it’s like if your best friend were an OB/GYN but with the knowledge of 100 OB/GYNs. We say that because one doctor can have one perspective and clinical viewpoint but our Medical Advisory Board has several people looking across several areas of expertise in research and aggregating it to what they think is the best center point of it all.
Q: How do you make sure you are giving strong medical advice?
A: As part of starting a company in partnership with the medical community, we had to spend an incredible amount of time recruiting a Medical Advisory Board and understanding all the research from the start. Everything that Modern Fertility does is meant to inform a conversation with your doctor, your partner and yourself, so that you can be your own health advocate. That said, because fertility is not black and white — and because we don’t have a customer’s full medical history — we don’t provide specific medical advice. Diagnoses can’t be formed off of single fertility hormone tests. Modern Fertility gives you information about the hormones that are inside of your own body today so that you can use that information to have that conversation with your doctor. Also, we believe that the way to honor each woman’s unique choice is opting to not provide medical advice.
We say we’re unbiased because we don’t tell you what to do with your results or your body. We don’t have a horse in the race with what decisions you make with regards to your fertility. Our Medical Advisory Board looks across all kinds of research papers and when there’s a gap in the research, we let our customer know that some research says something and the other research says something slightly different. The reality is that it’s really hard to get through all the questions you may have for your OB/GYN. We view Modern Fertility as the baseline and the first step on for that larger conversation.
