Enough is Enough, LA

A heart attack took my grandfather and it’s coming for me next.

My grandfather was the hero of my childhood memories. I never got to meet him, but I remember my dad sitting with me in our backyard on warm summer nights, telling me stories about him. What was he like? What adventures had he gone on back home in the Middle East?

I immigrated to Los Angeles when I was still in diapers and loved these magical stories — a portal to another world I could only imagine. Except my grandfather didn’t die like a hero in a story… he died of a heart attack.

When I asked why my grandfather had passed away so young, the answer was always: “You just never know. These things happen.”

When a middle school friend of mine took his own life one night, I wasn’t sure what to make of it…just yesterday we were playing handball. My mom did her best to explain: “People get mental health issues. These things happen.”

When a high school classmate got cancer, my teacher sat me down to break the news. I had to be told twice. One day, my classmate was sitting next to me, then we never heard from him again. “He’s gone. These things happen.”

It didn’t really register. I couldn’t relate. I guess I was just lucky.

Growing up in LA, the message was that if you worked hard enough at being successful, beautiful, or fit, you could will your way to it: an extra hour at the gym, an extra skin peel, or laser treatment. Anything could be fixed with enough effort or money. But when it came to actual, real-life, terror-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach health — health that went deeper than muscles and skin — it somehow devolved into helplessness. It was something that happened to you, not something you could control.

A few years after college, my brother had a heart attack. Let me repeat — my brother had a heart attack. He was 31! It all finally clicked in my head — my grandfather, my friend, my brother. Me.

It’s like my whole life, death had been stalking me and I had only just noticed its shadow walking behind me. We’re getting taken down and I wasn’t even awake enough to notice it. We go around saying “he was so young” and “live every day like it’s your last.”

Enough is enough. Time to fight back. Time to take control. No, today’s not my last.

I bought every heart sensor, did every genetics and blood test I could get my hands on, and brought all my data to the best doctors I could find. The response I got was: “I’m not a geneticist. What do you want me to do with all of this?”

How did we end up in this world where healthcare is something that just happens to us?

Airbnb said enough with overpriced hotels. Uber said enough with drunk driving. Tesla said enough with climate change. But somehow, when it comes to my health — the most important thing I have — nobody’s said enough.

I’m done being a passenger, hand me the keys — I’m driving. I want every piece of data I can get: my blood tests, my microbiome, my genetics, my wearables, my body scans, my meds, everything… all in one place. And then I want the world’s best experts — the M.D.’s, the geneticists, the engineers — to translate that into action.

Health isn’t a lottery, let’s stop acting like it is. I’m not going to be another “these things happen.”

So that’s why I founded Forward. In my family, heart disease is taking us out one by one and I’m determined to stop it. In your family maybe it’s cancer, obesity, or something else. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re taking all the actionable data we can capture and surfacing it to our doctors so they can help our members make proactive decisions instead of passively hoping for the best.

We opened in San Francisco earlier this year. Overnight, our founding members started telling us their stories — stories about their sisters, their mothers, their children. Stories that inspired them to do something about their health instead of waiting for it to happen to them. We’ve got a long way to go and a lot left to build, but it’s now a reality. I’m excited to add Los Angeles to the family, to bring this back to where it started for me.

We open our doors today in Century City — stop by and take control of your health.