Recap: Ask Me Anything

I hosted my first ever Ask Me Anything last Friday. The motivation was twofold. Of course, I’m always eager to connect with more amazing entrepreneurs and innovators working at the intersection of public health and tech, especially the women and people of color typically underrepresented in these spaces.

On my Spotlight Health at Aspen Ideas Festival panel, the final question focused on how to be more welcome and supportive for those underrepresented entrepreneurs. Thankfully, a few suggestions emerged:

1. “Founder dating” for public health tech entrepreneurs
2. Fellowship/apprenticeship opportunities for people to break into public health tech
3. Greater transparency and higher visibility of amazing companies in this space.

I’ve listed a few resources related to these suggestions. Please feel free to add more resources and suggestions to this post. Also add claps if you want a repeat AMA!

Resources

Onboard Health: Platform building a diverse workforce for sustainable health innovation and helping companies become more inclusive

#sdohtech: Twitter hashtag that I have used to aggregate and highlight companies working to improve health outcomes among vulnerable populations

Healthy Hustle Habits: 1:1 and group coaching for idea-stage female founders looking to validate their idea for their health venture

Heroic Stories of Public Health Innovators: If you or someone you’d like to nominate is an innovator working at the intersection of public health and tech, please complete this form for a future interview to share their work.

Side Note: At P2Health, we have been weighing the merits of a community to facilitate “founder dating,” collaboration as well sharing more expertise and experience. If you’d be interested, let us know!

Video and Transcript

Transcript

I produced this transcript using Otter AI for the first time. It’s unedited so please forgive a few deviations throughout the transcription. Erring on the side of making this available rather than waiting until it’s perfect.

0:55
Hello,

1:00
message in the chat window would be great to just get an intro from all of you. Tell me who you are, what you’re working on. And I’ll wait another episode. Another couple minutes for you hit 11am. Testing. Testing. Vanessa, can you hear me?

1:45
Yes.

1:47
Okay, sorry. I’m trying to deal with this zoom thing. I’ve got a new Mac. So.

1:56
Okay, let’s see

1:59
together. Start video in the share screen.

2:07
Hi, how are you? video?

2:09
I

2:11
kind of way like staying with us at all. Um, yeah,

2:15
you’re all I’ll do this for a quick minute and go see I’m in my swimsuit stuff.

2:20
Hi, Vanessa. Can you see me? I

2:23
can see you yet. Still black screen?

2:26
Yeah, I got a bunch of questions that came in ahead of time. So there’s a couple of just like what ground level and questions I want to answer kind of like, Who am

2:34
I? How did I get here? For sure. I figured I kick off

2:40
I think, yeah, it’s 1101. And so yeah, I’ll kick things off. So the first question that came in was, how was your background education lead you to what you’re doing with PT, health? I don’t know either one of you know, what I’m working on right now. But I’m the co founder and managing partner for peach and helping we’re a new venture fund, we focus on investing in early stage startups at the intersection of tech and public health. So the answer of how did I get here is multifaceted because there really is no kind of track within public health that leads to tech and venture capital per se. For me,

I started my public health career, doing a lot of health communication work both in the US and abroad and was to Mozambique and do more of that work, and then also in Argentina as well. And then when I went to graduate school was very focused a lot on health system strengthening, so really having the right financial capital human capital operational needs set up so that you could deliver better health care when I graduated, I was

um, and then when I graduated from grad school, I went into biotech consulting, because as someone who was really focused on global health and new private sector really had a lot to deliver. And then I had also started dabbling in tech. While I was in grad school, I worked on a couple of different projects focused on mobile phone usage by community health workers. And I, I worked on a team that designed a curriculum to train managers of those community health workers to both optimized mobile health data collection to be able to use that to deploy assets to address emerging health needs from that data collected and really start the beginnings of a very early public health surveillance system. also working on another project that did market research for a

bunch of physician networks, both in western East Africa and looking at using mobile phones to be able to do digital consoles. So I kind of dabbled in tech before in the global health side of things, but hadn’t seen in the US context. And basically, my biotech consulting experience, got me to see from the business side how the health care system works, because what form but you’ve got to work with payers and providers, there’s also some marketing and sales and working on commercialization of biotech is is a really great vantage point.

I started working in tech, basically, six years ago, I start, I worked at Rock health, I ran their diversity initiative focused on women, a digital health, so getting more women to start digital health startups joined it at a whole startup as employees, and then also getting women who are working at kind of the larger, more corporate stakeholders, like the health systems of the world, the payers to partner with these startups to help them grow. And so what’s that what that work, it was a lot of connecting people to talent, a lot of connecting people to investment opportunities, and just again, a really great vantage point to see what was working in digital health and what was not working from the standpoint of someone who was trained in public health and have higher public health experience. When I left rock health, I joined a nonprofit consulting organization that kind of brought a lot of these different worlds together. And so I met a portfolio pilot interventions focused on leveraging tech for political populations. So it’s kind of bringing together all this digital health kind of connection going on with the settings that I that are typically not focused on a digital health so vulnerable populations, and looking at more like prevention and really being able to see what was efficacious in those settings, what did what were the product development needs, what were the sort of different business strategies, and that really was what led me to start the fund because there were these two persistent needs that came up that work as well as events that I started hosting in the Bay Area, a lack of access to capital, and a lack of a supportive ecosystem around these innovations that really provided the fertile ground them to be able to grow. So again, those kind of connections that are necessary.

So that’s like, my background in education took Chukwudi, I hope I’m saying your name correctly, I really don’t like to put your focus names. Um, okay. So really passionate about career readiness for middle school, the college students, career advancement for post graduates currently working on creating a platform that has career opportunities for PFC. Want to know more about your work in DC and why I got into it. So I kind of answer the VC heart of it. working on getting into VC myself. And I’m looking into creating an impact investment VC fund in Nigeria. Well, if you haven’t heard of my friend by fo Mo, do, you definitely should connect with her. I know, she’s been focusing a lot on getting more investment into tech startups in Nigeria, she’s half spends a fair amount of her time there. And then also in the Bay Area to like, that would be another person to talk to

7:32
the name again, my fo mo do she just was named the Forbes 30 under 30, I think, like a week ago.

7:41
Thank you. Sure.

7:44
And then Amy, I know you had a question that was focused on tournament, I tried to pull them all into one

7:54
thing. So you had to you had a two parter questions. So I think it was like one this question of Is there like a founder dating type of platform available for folks who are interested in advancing Republic public health tech and innovation ideas? And then there was the second part of the question about how what’s the best way to align with practitioners already in this space in order to show like the sort of revenue generation model and attract VC interest? So I can answer the first part of that no, there is there is not something that is specific to this particular area, both my partner Marchesa Finch and I have been working on developing this very thing, you’re talking about this sort of founder dating kind of collaboration platform, we’re both kind of the larger stakeholders, again, like providers, payers, to certain extent pharma in that there, they may be interested in this can have opportunities to showcase like, what have been their biggest challenges with advancing innovation in this space, and what are their needs. And then for entrepreneurs who either have products for folks who are interested in starting a company to be able to see that, and again, like, partner with, or do some sort of both founder dating, customer dating, we literally have a proposal that we have been shopping around trying to

9:06
find ways to catalyze this, because we realize it’s, again, it’s part of this ecosystem disconnect. But like, you know, people who are interested in a lot of this, don’t happen, necessary connections to do that. And I can tell you, it’s definitely on our mind, it’s something that we know, that is a persistent problem, we just haven’t been able to get quite yet. But we are, we are certainly working on it, and are doing our best to do that. Um, the second piece of that is, in terms of the best way to align with practitioners in this space. I think that, okay, so we attract VC interest making most of these days. So I think, you know, as an investor, like with any use case, when you’re starting off early, you have some underlying assumptions of what your product, what value your product is going to provide, and who’s going to be most interested in buying it. But the thing is, is that you have to be able to test those assumptions with folks. And so one of the best ways to do that is to just get in front of people who are potential decision makers. I know, when I was trying to break into tech, actually, that I didn’t know kind of how to understand that space. And a lot of times just being in a room, and like attending those panels, attending those events, attending things like this, and being able to ask questions and kind of trying to find where there are gaps in kind of operational needs. But I’m going to try to give you a more specific example of this. So in one example, like I was talking to a, an insurance company executive for four or five months ago. And one of the things that like, popped out of that conversation that I had not heard before was that he was like, well, we get pitched all the time. And I was like, Well, of course, you get pitched all the time.

10:44
But one of the issues that a lot of companies don’t realize when they’re pitching insurance companies is that you have to think where they fit, you have to think about where your company fits into their budget, and how their purchasing processes proceed. So basically, they were talking to a company that they found their value proposition compelling, but because of how they price their tech enabled service, it didn’t really fit with how they budgeted out, like, there’s certain needs, you know, there’s so many things for, like, operational needs, so many things for quality improvement, so many things for kind of staff, and this company kind of didn’t fit in any of those boxes. And because they didn’t fit any of those boxes, like that was a customer they could not have. So there’s just there’s a lot to be gained from just talking to people and both, you know, really understanding the challenges, first and foremost, but secondly, like, how do they make decisions, under what circumstances under what pressures under what constraints on those are all core to you being able to really shorten that sales cycle in health care, because as we all know, it’s notoriously long whether you’re on the b2c side of things. And then it’s more of like how you acquire all these people that are constantly being sold everything and hearing different messages, whether you’re on the b2b side of things where then you have to deal with all sorts of risks and liabilities and, and then just the sort of general like inertia to adopting certain innovations versus others. So that’s kind of how I would adjust that second piece is really, you know, get into conversations as much as you can like, really leverage your existing network to people who already have some of those relationships and start talking to, you know, the insurance companies that you might be connected to, like, the health systems you may be connected to, and sort of other folks who you think may be potential customers, because, like, that’s going to be your sure fire way of understanding kind of like getting a better idea of how to proceed and testing those assumption. Thanks.

12:40
Okay. So I know I got a question from someone else. He said, When banking firms of the public health focused, you generally expect that government governments will be the primary customers? The short answer is no. Um, so a large part of why Marcus and I started this fund is really that between value based care or just like the cost curve. And in this industry, there is there has always been a need and other has an even more pressing an urgent need to actually be able to improve healthcare outcomes. And if you’re anyone who has a public health background, like of course, the sort of definition of public health is really around how do you improve any prevent disease from even happening, and how do you promote health among all populations, and chiefly, we are focused on when we look at all populations, specifically, we’re looking at vulnerable populations because just from percentage wise, those tend to be like the sort of 5% of folks who are driving the 50 to 55% of cost. So from an ROI perspective, obviously, there’s a huge payoff if you can reduce their kind of adverse events, other incidents, other costs associated with managing chronic diseases that they have, and addressing a lot of those non clinical needs that complicate care management.

13:54
Um, and then there’s the second question of what what opportunities do you see providing public health driven products services to large corporations,

14:03
so it’s a kind of, if we’re talking about so one I can talk about, like our investment criteria. So we are looking for early stage startups that are addressing preventive or population health and improving the health outcomes of medically vulnerable populations. The second criteria is that startups are aiming to close the health disparity are addressing health and equity disparities cost the healthcare system and estimated $300 billion a year. And then, you know, we’ve already got sort of $3 trillion in health care spending, and one third of that as ways. So if we can, one third of that waste actually, as disparities, boy, we could really address that it would be a major changer in our healthcare system. And obviously, like my position is, is that focusing on health equity and advancing health equity is ultimately additive advantage for startups in the space. And so anything that you can do to do that, and it’s going to be interesting, which you and ultimately going to inherently be tied to outcomes and therefore tied to our ally, which makes you more attractive to customers. The third investment criteria is focused on evidence based medicine, or what I’m now adopting this idea of evidence based medicine and practice based evidence. So how are you continuing to test and validate your product or your tech enabled service and, and then the fourth grade series of habit to diversity. So we’re looking to invest in underrepresented founders, women, people of color folks who usually don’t get their moment to talk about what they’re like, show what they’re building, and be able to scale and provide that impact from a financial perspective. Like, again, like I said, we’re focused on preceded seed investments, and average check size of 150 to 400 K. And for us, like, we we see ourselves as more as a strategic investor. Like I said, Look, lack of access to capital is just one part of the problem that we saw when we were starting this fun, there was also this ecosystem side of things. That’s fragmentation that Amy I think that you pointed out.

16:06
And so anything that we can do to facilitate those relationships, build that social capital that allows entrepreneurs to be able to close those partnerships, close those contracts, be able to scale in a way that is actually improving the health outcomes of even more people. That is what we are focused on during for entrepreneurs, like outside of just the investment

16:32
and in terms of opportunities, specific opportunities. So I’m really interested in folks that are actually legitimately wisely using artificial intelligence and machine learning to be able to leverage existing data sets which are notoriously either terrible or very silos across both health as well as a lot of the social services data that we know that we already have, when you’re looking at vulnerable populations, there’s a lot of kind of touch points that they have that are outside of what is known as the healthcare system. So some of the companies that we have been supporting with like introductions and additional relationships are really focused on how do you use data about either usage or non usage of non clinical services to predict in adverse health event. And so, you know, anything that is focused on something like that, like kind of like other prediction of prevention of adverse events on the basis of non clinical means connecting folks to non clinical needs,

17:36
being able to help folks make better decisions about non clinical means, like I’ve talked to a number of companies all a lot about food and nutrition decisions, like being able to address a lot of the food, desert issues, transportation, obviously, income generation where takes place, like have started talking to a couple of ed tech companies that are addressing kind of early childhood education gaps, and how that’s tied to healthcare outcomes, a lot of kind of built environment to censored kind of apps that kind of show that we’re in environment as positive potential health outcomes or not. So that’s kind of where that falls and like, I’ve been tweeting a lot more about that, and companies that I see really under the hashtag of St. O h tech. So I think that that sort of grouping of tech startups that are addressing social determinants of health and either connecting that directly to healthcare outcomes were affecting a particular determinant that has already been demonstrated to affect health care outcomes. That’s an area that we are really focused on. I know, I got another question that was related to block chain, but my partner Marchesa Finch is the health lead for the Silicon Valley blockchain society. So, we’re also looking at blockchain solutions as well,

18:47
particularly those that are supporting care coordination, health insurance coverage, and a couple of other applications as well. And again, sort of those sort of Perry health kind of applications leveraging blockchain. And then I would say the last area really, that we’re looking at two are just knowing trends toward urbanization, and looking at trends and like civic tech, where does health fit into that, and whereas held like are compromised by existing growth or changes in civic tech or

19:21
other compromised are supported by changes in civic tech. So looking at that space as well.

19:28
So I feel like

19:29
I’ve been talking about also if you guys have more questions to like, have a bunch here, but he’s

19:35
really cool. Yeah, thank you. Sure. Um, let’s see,

19:47
someone was asking about advice you could share with someone from a public health background and move into social impact public health innovation or impact investing space? So I think she would have you had a question related to this. And then this is another one that came. And so if you were looking at moving into this public health and innovation space, I can give you probably a couple lessons from things I actually did. And also a couple lessons from things that I wish that I had done.

20:14
One, I think, was just fundamentally being curious about what was I not seeing

20:23
what was I not seeing an application of public health methodologies like, you probably could see that and more concise way, but basically, like, how could you achieve those same like outcomes, but in a far more scalable, passionate, and I’m like, that was something that I went into graduate school already being very curious about. And I kind of found

20:40
being a graduate school for public health, slightly limiting because of that, because there’s a culture of wanting to do things, the way that they’ve been done, and do it at a pace that it has been done

20:52
that does not necessarily match with the world is going on. So I think having that curiosity and wanting to look at areas that are adjacent to you, what your what you have done, and what you’re learning and public health. Like, I think that is a very valuable skill to have. Secondly, in terms of what you can do a lot of what we were trying to enable, and I think I’ve maybe didn’t mention this before that when Marcus and I were starting p to health centers. And before we even got to this point of starting it, we were hosting an event series in the Bay Area just bringing folks together to talk about these related to tech and public health so we hosted panels, fireside chats a lot on like design, social determinants of health, precision medicine. And so I think putting yourself in contact and spaces where are these conversations are happening, or where they could happen is very valuable. We are trying to get back to hosting more events, there’s been a lot going on as the funders and wanting and working on that, that have made it very difficult for us to continue hosting events. And we realized that there’s a lot of value in that. And part of the reason I wanted to do this ama was to do this and maybe a lot more lightweight manner than doing an in person event. And also allow for some geographic diversity to because not everyone’s in the Bay Area. Um, but I would say those are two things that that I’ve done before, I would say outside of the things that I wish that I had done,

22:18
again, kind of going back to this event or reaching out of that sort of space, don’t be afraid to sort of cold pitch yourself to startups that either you think are doing something interesting or

22:32
where you see a role for your particular skill set. So a lot of what

22:37
so and Marcus and I were starting out kind of having events, we realized that this issue of vocabulary was a big challenge, you know, in, for example, like in public health, like everyone studies kind of social and behavioral sciences associate medical sciences. And that’s fundamentally the science of behavior changes, behavioral science, Behavioral Medicine, but anytime you have like a digital health company, for example, that’s focused on digital therapeutics, you need to leverage those skill sets like you need those sort of evidence based practices and methodologies to be able to have your therapeutic be be successful to achieve its healthcare outcome, and then achieve that and have that be sustained over time. So I would say, you know, anyone who kind of has that sort of behavior change health promotion background, from a public health standpoint, would do really well, at a digital therapeutics company. If you were more of an epidemiological person, you would do really well at a company that was very focused on predictive data analytics, anything that’s using really large data sets to kind of understand either mass amounts of like health behaviors or mass amounts of health outcomes, and how do we kind of uncover linkages to that, and if you’re someone who’s doing more kind of population and Family Health, the world is a little bit wider for you. But depending on what you are looking at, I think that that plays well with sort of more either population health management company. So those that are trying to, again, like look at how to recommend interventions for folks with particular conditions,

24:10
what does the other department Look how always forgetting and then statistics, I mean, if you are a statistics person coming from public health, you pretty much can go anywhere, because there’s just a lack of statistical know how writ large, so you kind of have your, your pick of the litter. But that’s kind of how I would equate kind of your background your life with particular types of startups.

24:35
And so and you kind of present yourself with available and say, Hey, I’m really active in the space, you have, like, an ongoing, are there challenges, like challenge or initiative or something that I could work on, like, a discrete project and making yourself available to them. Like, that’s always a way like experience is the best teacher

24:52
and I think that

24:56
see if there’s anything else in terms of background in this space. Again, this is part of the reason like why we want this place where people can kind of connect and find each other, because I think that

25:09
whether it’s you thinking about starting a company, or just hearing about more companies in this space, I think that’s, that’s really the discovery problem is ultimately what’s impeding, like, the sort of career transition. But yeah, I think those three things are probably what I do from a career perspective.

25:27
Um,

25:31
yeah, and I think someone else had a question about what business models work best to sustain impact in which in the long term beyond initial VC investment,

25:42
I’m a big believer in the fact that, like, revenue was always King. So any models that are,

25:51
if you are serving a sort of ongoing need, whether it’s, that’s for like, kind of population lifecycle reasons, or because the, your customer kind of has an ongoing need, like, that’s where it like your business model actually really fits. So I’ll give an example of so like a, the company health if I, for example, they they were built on the model of health leads, which was a nonprofit that came out of Johns Hopkins, if you’re not familiar with that. But the basic concept is, is that they the in person concept was that there was a help desk within a particular clinic. And then when patients had their receive their care management plan for whatever their chronic disease or chronic diseases were, they were also referred to this desk does help desk within the clinic to

26:40
get assessments and referrals for other non clinical services. So help if I basically is a digital version of that, like, it includes an assessment and referral of community based services, things such as transportation, things, such as food assistance, that enable folks to access those services so that they can remain adherent to their care plan. And so when I think about business models, the thing what I always advocate and why he’s helped advisors example is that the best model if you are thinking about starting a company in the space, and ones that kind of hit these two,

27:14
these two goals that you need to provide some kind of operational efficiency for your customer, in this case, health, if I has reduced the workload of the social work the social workers by there by a third of the ruse to a third, I can’t remember the exact preposition. But the idea is that social workers before we’re swimming and paper, it was hard for them to keep up their caseload, which meant that even if they were doing assessments they weren’t following up to see if they were followed through on. So that’s just like the sort of throughput operational efficiency value prop, you also need to have a value prop within a value based care setting. Because the fact the matter is that while the health care system is transitioning to value based care, it’s not there yet. And the predominant amount of business is actually at odds with that value based care model. It’s like the butts in bed scenarios, it is more profitable for them right now to over sort of treat for whoever comes in, and to treat them for any and everything that they can think about. Like, that’s just our reality right now. And there’s some revenue to be generated on the value side. But we are not there yet. Where it’s competing enough that the value based care side is always going to win, it wins in some circumstances, but not others right now. So I think that the most of the companies that are most successful right now that I’ve seen, that you’ve met with that we’ve supported have been ones that have been able to demonstrate that dual value proposition of like, we can make your operation more efficient. And we can also provide value for you that outcomes improvement under quality measures with its height is whatever the quality improvement measures are, that you can make revenue on the value based care side, in addition to reducing your expenses

28:51
outside of that, in terms of business models, like obviously, the anything that’s like a

28:58
kind of I’d like either disease area thinking like that, that you need to support ongoing. So I’ve been looking at me meeting with in talking to a lot of women’s health companies, because I think from a life cycle perspective, I don’t think anyone has really figured out how to

29:15
adequately serve Women’s Health at a very, like distinctive periods of life in a very curious to see if there’s companies out there that kind of get that women’s health is not simply about either pregnancy,

29:28
or like tracking periods, like this idea that there is like, some level of continuity between all of those is still very, very, very nascent. So that’s kind of what I mean, when I think about, like, lifecycle like thinking beyond this very narrow point of this single decision. And thinking about how you can retain someone for basically years with your company. Because, like, it’s a need, it’s going to be reoccurring, like over time, you kind of see that someone with companies like

30:04
propeller health because like they’ve now it’s going to be on the users are solely be focused on asthma. And now they have this idea that they can do kind of all respiratory diseases and all respiratory related diseases,

30:17
because they have like a sensor in the platform able to track that they kind of have that, in a sense, it’s less of a life cycle play and more of a therapeutic area play. But that’s where I see like a successful business model like playing as well.

30:33
Thanks. Someone just hopped in, feel free to also like add questions in chat, or to just ask to like, I have a lot.

30:43
And again, you bet. I really love the passion you’re showcasing here. It’s really to see like, the good advice thank you for like, yeah, I wouldn’t go back to cold pitching to startups about you know, if you see like, if they’re doing some things, I’m hopping on board, do you have any tips for like, you know, reaching out to and actually making yourself more marketable on in that first goal,? Yeah,

31:04
I mean, you know, with any cold pitch like you want to one keep the Ask really, really light. Like, I always think the first meeting is always about getting to know each other. So it’s more like, Hey, this is who I am, I’ve done like these one did you things that I think could be really helpful to you would love to chat to see if there there’s an opportunity there to be

31:27
that will be helpful for your company. And then the first meeting really is just about you go in and what you really want to find out? Or what are their biggest challenges or pain points? What have they done to solve them? What have they

31:42
kind of, have they done anything like this before I’m I brought someone on a lot of times, the answer is going to be no. And so then the next follow up about that is like kind of what sort of constraints you the other see or not see, your second meeting is about kind of structuring what that opportunity could look like. Because like, at the end of the day, no matter who you’re talking to them, we’re going to need to go back and talk to someone else about how to onboard someone who is temporary how to provide enough goalpost that it’s not too much work for them to bring you on, but also still enough ROI that whatever you’re doing is actually helpful. And then all your subsequent meetings are about tweaking whatever happens after that second meeting. So you know, going in with an attitude of curiosity, then that first meeting, and in that second one, really trying to make it as easy for them to say yes, as possible. And that’s partially why the first meeting is so important, because you want to know, you know, paying points, how do they usually operate? And how can you kind of slot yourself into that and scope something that’s pretty clear, that’s how I would say, like, pitching and reaching out to them. Like, I’ve had a lot of friends who’ve just like, gotten clients from cold, like, cold emails, including myself. And so that’s something that’s been pretty,

33:02
thank you.

33:02
Yeah. And then I would also say to, like, you know, like, yes, I’m talking about cold things. But, you know, if, if you have someone who’s like a lead, like someone who either like knows, the founder of the startup is somehow connected to them, or whatever, introductions are always going to get you a long way. So don’t Don’t, don’t forget to, you know, tap your networks as well. And you can do that same approach to like, Hey, I’m really looking for either like contract opportunities or opportunities to work on work like this. If you know someone you know who’s working at a start up like a, b and c, like, please connect me. And that’s also a great way to

33:38
thank you sure.

33:43
There were a couple of people. Hi,

33:50
I’m so glad I did. I do apologize to

33:55
anyone else who’s on the

33:56
ride in

33:58
New York cafes will never know what the wind

34:02
Yeah, I am. I’m in between meeting but I just didn’t miss this opportunity to say hello, Daniel tagged me in your post yesterday. Yeah, and brought me you know, to get to know who you are. And that

34:15
was really amazing.

34:17
My interest in hearing from you. I think, you know, you clearly had an incredible career

34:22
in public health psychology. And I love that you are currently with the firm, bridging

34:29
venture capital public health I’m so glad didn’t bother me, because that is actually exactly what I’m currently working on. I’ve recently made a career transition, I’m trained as a health care administrators.

34:41
However, in 2013,

34:42
there was a project that I started working on that really isn’t that intersection of public health and consumer goods and psychology.

34:53
And so for that reason, I’ve kind of dive completely deep into it. And so I’m just really interested in knowing your perspective as

35:00
far as consumer experience consumer goods, and how that type of marketplace that you’re

35:07
going to think that we see it that industry already we see really high uptake of technology

35:13
focus on data as it relates to the consumer and their behaviors. And we also see that consumers are picky about health care being driven by that.

35:23
So I was really interested in your thoughts on that,

35:27
you know, just innovating in the field of public health. Yeah, that’s a friend here,

35:33
I’m gonna make it but she can hear

35:37
listening. Not a problem. Like I’m also I think this Yes, this is recording too. So I’m going to post this at some point, I think on medium and then we’ll see. Um, there’s a couple of different like transcript

35:51
but your question so it kind of sounds like a two parter

35:56
one, what are the opportunities when you look at consumerism at the intersection of tech and public health and to when you look at consumerism, how it’s driving healthcare on kind of what ramifications is that half for public health in a bit like innovation? So I think I’ll answer the second part for so as far as consumers, I’m driving opportunities in healthcare,

36:21
I

36:23
I have mixed feelings about this trend of like talking about consumers in healthcare. One, I think that people in a particular in in a healthcare settings specifically are not used to acting as consumers. And we do not yet provide them the tools necessary for them to be hate as consumers, whether that’s on the price transparency front, whether that’s on the sort of education, educational decision making sort of front, like, whether it’s on the, you know, how is this going to play out, like, if I’m making a decision, how does this affect like, my child is also my plan kind of sounds like there’s there’s not a lot of players. But I do think that there’s a lot of onus being pushed on consumers to be able to make better like to make decisions that are financially favorable, as well as favorable in terms of health care outcomes. And I think we see that in the statistics coming out that people, you know, they, they make decisions with their pocketbook, because that’s what they see and feel first. So folks will, they will not fulfill prescription drugs, they will not go to certain visits, they will not do, you know, certain behaviors that we know to actually be positive on the upside. What I do see as opportunities when you look at public health innovation are

37:36
embedding technologies and settings where folks can make those kinds of decisions, or whether at least that can be introduced at a particular point in time when they may not even be thinking that that is, in fact a health decision. So what I mean is that so I’ll give an example of a company’s is a company called Boswell. They’re based in Boston, Massachusetts, they have a SAS platform. So software as a service platform that is focus on it helps community based organizations basically. But these CEOs use the platform to be able to kind of assess constituent needs refer them to services within their own community based organization. But because of the data that’s collected, it’s kind of like a heat map for for predicting ER visits, basically. So the customer the boss was actually serving or folks like Medicaid a CEOs the CEO is get this again, going back to this sort of earlier I talked about this cut off like a double bottom line, the CEOs have a value proposition there that like they were operating on paper primarily. And so now this idea that they can be able to track what kinds of services are they for people to do, what volume at what point in time that enables them to get access to other sources of financing for their organization. And for the Medicaid a CEO, they get to reduce the number of avoidable ER visits, which obviously is great, because they cost a lot of money. But the reason why I brought this up is that because people don’t think of,

39:03
you know, going to your local community based organization and maybe needing more

39:10
more transit tickets as a predictor for a healthcare outcome. But now that’s introduced at this point of applying for more transit tickets as an indicator of something either health wise is either wrong or it’s about to go wrong. And that decision before was kind of going without any sort of health ramifications before and then showing up later. So this idea that

39:33
we can put it in the power of consumers hands, I think, to be able to make those decisions or whether to like, kind of ratchet up the importance of those decisions. And a health context I think, is very exciting. And I have seen some companies from an API perspective that are looking at

39:50
whether it’s navigation, whether it’s care coordination, whether it’s kind of communicating with caregivers, like those sort of opportunities to be able to kind of have like, either, like micro coaching Microsoft decision making, like at that point, rather than when it’s too late. I think that’s kind of where I see consumerism promoting more public health innovation, because it is trying to get it’s really more focused on consumers and their decisions that they make,

40:15
and then trying to remember the first question, I got sidetracked. But um, yeah, so like, that’s kind of where I see the opportunity and consumers and like in the space, when you look at public health innovation are really around

40:28
navigation, care coordination, sort of micro coaching, how do you actually connect folks who are very important to them. So I’ve seen a lot more apps on the caregiving side of things. So

40:40
either

40:42
caregivers, being able to kind of have access to better understanding of what factors are affecting the person that they’re caring for, and being able to anticipate what’s going to happen next, as like the caregivers being able to kind of quarterback that and then also just from a caregiver burden, like being aware of like, their own predictors were like burnout, depression, and connecting them to resources so that they can provide caregiving more efficiently. That’s kind of where I see consumers and like driving with opportunities there, again, on decision making side and kind of automating a lot of decisions that

41:20
happen anyway, right now, in a very kind of like, don’t like I’m saying dumb way, but it’s not like it’s done. But it’s just like, it’s very slow and manual analog, that’s where consumerism kind of has

41:32
some some room to play.

41:37
Yeah, no, thank you so much. And I I’m glad that it can be recorded. I definitely want to circle

41:43
back with you

41:46
and just kind of hear more about this specific examples you’ve seen with that. Yeah, but yeah, but thank you. Thank you so much for hosting this. I will definitely reach out to connected

41:57
Yeah, of course, does this this is like a test to see like, what would happen if I did this?

42:08
I don’t know if anyone I think there’s someone on the phone? I don’t know if you’ve got a question you I can unmute you. If you do or you might be able to unmute yourself.

42:21
I’m trying to see if there’s any other question that I have

42:29
is the blockchain one.

42:34
But what role do you think the private sector can play to improve public health beyond corporate social responsibility? So I guess I can kind of expand upon so a lot of So a question that I get a lot is that well, one is that well, it’s public health wise, and it just governments and I feel like someone asked that already. And then to there’s the I get the opposite extreme of do I expect kind of public to become completely privatized? And the short answer that is no,

43:05
I look at public health tech and innovation as an opportunity to fill a gap. Basically, I wrote an article about this for Fast Company last year, that’s called dear Silicon Valley, it pays to care about public health. And, you know, for me, this is this is both like a financial and a sort of demand driven opportunity. One, public health has always been under funding, and it continues to be progressively even more underfunded. That’s just the pure financial issue there. With that said, like, obviously, the needs are still present. And they’re growing, because there’s always kind of emerging threats coming on the horizon in terms of

43:49
being able to better present prevent diseases to start out with. And then also looking from a needle vulnerable populations, if you look at like, whether it’s folks who are on Medicaid folks who are limited limited English proficiency populations, whether it’s just people who in general, don’t have as many resources to be able to best care for their health. And so when you look at the kind of the, there’s less financial support, growing demand, but then there’s obviously like a disconnect there, like in that gap. Like I kind of see public health and tech and innovation playing in that gap of addressing a lot of the underserved needs right now, with scalable effective solutions,

44:32
I think that there will always be room for public sector public health, because at the end of the day, like a single private company is not going to construct an entire infrastructure for like food surveillance, for example, it’s just not going to happen or, you know, kind of emerging disease surveillance or, you know, like right now, I think the what just came out the news like last week was just thinking about funding for

44:58
the Public Health Service, am I being able to provide adequate service to the Indian Health Service as well as to respond epidemics like, those are things that are always going to remain in the public domain. But for other things that are like health education campaigns, being able to kind of detect either outbreaks are emerging issues sooner than than we already see this category of digital therapeutics, like making it more accessible to keep people from either from getting diabetes, who haven’t coarsening asthma from having chronic disease, chronic kidney disease, from you know, like, just talk with someone last week who’s working on brain injury with kids, but she’s focused to, like, less so on

45:39
less so on, like, how to keep kids like not playing football, but like how to train kids to like play in a way that safer, you know, those sort of needs are not being served by the public health system right now. But technology has an opportunity to kind of shift behavior and also be integrated into a system that continuously it’s sustainably shifts that behavior and that’s where I think that sweet spot brilliant lives there is, and that sort of scale and sustainability where technology is as best at doing that.

46:13
Yeah, I don’t know if any of you have more questions

46:18
for me, I actually have to run right now, too. So

46:22
thank you, for Olson is though this was I just saw this on the fly actually, from Dan to me. Yeah, I saw him at me. And then from there, I just saw that. And this was a good opportunity, because I’ve been trying to get into VC and like figure that out, and everyone else spoken to is like, it’s hard, you got to start something where you should be born in 1970. So

46:42
it is, but I mean, it certainly is, I mean, a large, I do have to be honest, like a large for the reason why I started my own firm was that I, I neither saw one that really fit what I wanted to focus on. And it was really hard to break in. But that said, like, things are things are changing, they’re more they’re more fun, like mine that are run by people who are traditional, like venture capitalists that are really trying to focus on new parts of the market that have been under invested in and that there’s a lot of financial return available. So definitely keep trying. And like you said, like, you know, keep building your networks, especially like, for VC like networks are key, your ability to be able to introduce and connect people to kind of anything and everything is definitely important. And I would say that my my background and that because of roles that I’ve had before and working at Rock health, which is a major digital health incubator working

47:38
in

47:42
the nonprofit consulting that I did a lot of the work that I did, there was speaking at a little conferences to share the work that we were doing. And so I had a very broad platform to connect with a lot of different people, sort of different parts of the healthcare system. And having that reach in those networks is is so incredibly important.

48:03
knowledge and wisdom. I really appreciate, like,

48:07
Look into my as well,

48:11
I would go in and please keep up the good. I was like, this was a no, you know, not everyone, like came on this. But this was so good. So please, if you do it again, first thing going to reach out to more of my friends. I just saw it last minute on my product my 10 minutes before, so. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah,

48:27
I just posted it this week. I came back from I spoke at Aspen at spotlight help last week. And one of the sort of things that I was talking about, it’s like trying to always trying to be more accessible to underrepresented entrepreneurs. So I definitely want to do things like this again.

48:45
Thanks, Amy. Yeah, I really, really working on

48:50
Are you good? Good. Good.

48:52
All right, you do? Yeah, I’m going to jump off to Vanessa, that it’s just been fabulous. I didn’t want to interrupt because I can’t tell how this this zoom is, you know, working with the screen share and stuff. But Gosh, it’s just been I was writing as fast as I could. I’ve got like three pages of notes here. So the fact that you’re going to record this and put it out there means you know, all the more people will get this data because you do not underestimate yourself. And you’re saying, I feel like I’m trying as much. It’s like, Yeah, but you are talking with some serious knowledge dropping, this is what we need to hear. And this is, you know, very specific to, you know, what we’re looking at. And Gosh, when you talk about bringing that hub into being of, you know, getting people all connected in that regard. It really would fast track a lot of us. And it just that’s so inspiring to me to know that you’re even thinking about that. So yay.

49:42
Thank you. It’s really great to hear

49:44
that. Yeah, what I’m thinking around going crazy.

49:49
And I also love the notion of the life cycle thing that you mentioned on the women because you’re right. I mean, it’s, it’s all about like these, it’s, if you’re not about pregnancy, or, you know, periods, it’s like just not there and a huge issues that have to do with everything from from the diversity chain to, you know, really the, the long term impact on osteoporosis, this anatomy things, you know, as people age through life, you know, things that happen with stressors, you know, environmental stuff, Child Development stuff, the aces, you know, which right now, is a big bugaboo for me, you know, it’s like, we’ve got quantifiable health outcomes were these idiots or, you know, pulling kids apart, and they will have long term health in, you know, both mental and physical impact, you know, we need to educate policymakers. This this is preventable stuff, you know,

50:46
like in San Francisco, and there’s like the Center for Youth Wellness. And that was one of the things like Dr. Neil, it’s really focused on like, interventions for aces, like, we know that these things exist. And then a lot of people experienced them, but like, what do we do about it?

50:58
So yeah, fabulous. I did a feature on her alone and got to see her speak, and Moran she was just amazing. And it she did speak all to the positive health outcomes. And that was really, you know, inspiring. Yeah, so keep up the great work and, and, gosh, you know, this, this was fabulous. I’m glad Andre told me about it. So, thank you. Thank you and keep it going.

51:23
Yeah, definitely. I got a couple emails from people. They’re like, Oh, I wish I could have joined us at a meeting pop up. So yeah, I’ll look at and talk to you like I know. Marchesa. I told her, I was like, it’s like, I’m going to try out this thing on Friday. And she’s like, let me know how it goes. So we want to, so she can also do and well, and she’ll have a ton more to say about blocking, we can kind of see how things play out that we do. And yet the AI was interested in what you were saying about that, because I’ve been kind of poking into media x at Stanford on the AI series and they’re just not asking the right questions. I went to the one on diversity and gender and it was just not there yet. It was just not there still about product ization and bells and whistles. And they’re not looking at some of the core issues that impact us all. You know, you’ve got to be studying the right thing. Yeah, definitely. And if you want to check that out, I know that So Sarah Hall, you back from momentary labs just was talking about tech and ethics at the HD like just two days ago, but she just released an article actually about like, five steps to kind of like, educate yourself around tech and ethics. And specifically, she’s been speaking a lot more about like AI. And that’s phase and one of the, like, if I can find the article, I’ll try to post it and what this medium post and I add this video, but she, she made a book list basically from sigh fine. So that’s

52:42
what’s what’s been happening, that would be a few said luminary labs and her name again, is Sarah Hall, you back she’s the CEO of women are labs, they’re based out of New York. Okay. But yeah, so she has an entire reading list of sci fi again, on this kind of like ethical consideration, getting people to kind of gear and think about as a, as I talked about this, and one of the things that I’m really looking at, too, is that I was just having a conversation with someone about AI. And it’s like, well, if you kind of assume that they’re going to figure out the algorithm bias ease and, you know, assuming like, once you get enough sort of transparency about that, I think that that’s actually possible. The biggest issue actually, is the data itself, and the data sets itself and what sort of bias have already been built into the data. Exactly. And that’s where I see like, the most room for things to just go off the rails and then be really compounded by the fact that there’s an era of objectivity about artificial intelligence. So like, that’s where I’m really focused on is like, what’s going on with the data and how it’s collected, and what data and where, and who has it, and who does not have it, and what decisions are actually made. Yeah,

53:49
and every time I brought up the, the ethics side of it, in fact, it a q&a thing, just just last week, even, you know, they act like it was a brand new, you know, concept. I mean, there was one guy that was really smart about it, and he we talked after and all that, but it was it was just interesting, because these are the things they should be thinking of before him, not after. Yeah,

54:11
and I would have to say that Google just, they just released like, I think either seven or eight principles on ethics and AI. So like, that’s also something to look at. So at least from a major player in this space, and as a

54:23
they’re also trying to not be so black box about what they’re doing with their AI as well. And so trying to be more proactive about sharing what’s going on and what’s going on with the algorithm. But again, they’re still there still the data issue

54:37
that’s always gonna be there.

54:39
Okay.

54:40
Thank you for joining my

54:43
heart. Appreciate it. Vanessa everything