Halle and Claudia cover:

• The early days of Rock Health in a walkup office in SF’s Chinatown
• How she learned to be a founder without the grind
• Why AI is growing faster in healthcare than in any other industry

Halle says there is lots of opportunity to build businesses in the healthcare industry, but you need to pick something you are passionate about:

“It is extremely hard to be a founder. It is 10 times harder to be a founder in healthcare… you're working on what I think are the most important problems that we will be able to solve, but it's also really challenging. [Make] sure you're picking a problem that you're genuinely very passionate about solving. That will help drive you and be your North Star when things get inevitably very, very hard. “

Relevant Links

Buy Halle’s book Massively Better Healthcare

Listen to Halle Tecco’s Podcast “The Heart of Healthcare”

Learn more about Rock Health

Menlo Ventures report on the state of AI in healthcare

About Our Guest

Halle Tecco is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and podcast host passionate about fixing our healthcare system. She is the founder of Natalist, which was acquired by Everly Health in October 2021. Previously, Halle founded and ran Rock Health, and was also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School, teaching the first MBA-level course on digital health investing.

A proud first-generation college graduate, Halle earned an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University, an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and a B.S. from Case Western Reserve University. She has served as a Board Member to the International African American Museum since 2018, and as an Advisor to the Harvard Medical School Department of Biomedical Informatics since 2014. Halle has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. She was named as one of Goldman Sach’s Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs and listed on the Forbes 30 under 30. She has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival, CES, TechCrunch Disrupt, and was a SXSW Keynote speaker.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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Fred and Claudia dive into:

• How in the age of AI our greatest asset is our humanity
• Why institutions like the FDA are essential foundations for innovation
• How specialty-driven medicine makes it hard to deliver whole person care

Fred says strong regulation is the foundation, not a barrier, to America’s global leadership in biotech:

“I happen to believe that the reason American medical technology and American pharmaceuticals are the most sought after in the world, if you can afford it, is because of the FDA. I like to say it's because of entrepreneurs like me, and it's because of everybody who's actually working so hard on it… We could not achieve the results that we're achieving around the world… If it weren't for the systems of standards and highest quality level thinking… that the FDA is bringing to the table.”

Relevant Links

Learn more about Imperative Care’s vision for treating stroke and other thromboembolic diseases

About Our Guest

Fred (Farhad) Khosravi is a Silicon Valley medical device entrepreneur who has held management and executive positions in both large and small medical technology enterprises over the last 30+ years. Throughout his career, he has been either the inventor or co-inventor for over 200 U.S. and worldwide granted and patent applications, making him one of the most prolific minds and leaders in the industry.

However, Fred’s passion for improving people’s lives goes beyond the medtech field. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan think tank dedicated to providing strategic national security insights to help decision makers chart a course toward a better world; is a member of the Board of Directors at Spirit of America, a nonprofit that promotes private-sector support for the safety and success of our troops and the local people they want to help; and is a convening board member for Technology for America, a nonprofit for promotion of innovation as a way to engage public-private dialogue that benefit all Americans.

Fred holds a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering and graduated cum laude with an M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Tennessee Tech University.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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Claudia, Liz and Hugo talk about:

1. How patients who are sick and scared often choose sharing over privacy
2. Why Hugo still can’t access his implanted device data
3. The need for a new doctor-patient relationship grounded in collaboration, not control

Liz says AI is surfacing the same reactions she saw around patients googling health information:

“It makes me think of the Dr. Google era of when clinicians were like, ‘patients shouldn't go online and look for information about their own health because they don't know how to search accurately for their own health information’. And I think we're at this early stage of the tension between health systems wanting to still control how patients find their own health information, versus our own curiosity and exploration of digging into our own health information and… asking the questions that are important to us and then discovering the answers ourselves in our own journey.”

Relevant Links

Read Liz and Hugo’s paper on Critical AI Health Literacy

Watch Hugo’s TEDx Talk on Fighting for the Right to Open His Heart Data

Learn more about the patient data transparency movement at OpenNotes

Read the full text of the 21st Century Cures Act

About Our Guests

Hugo Campos is an internationally recognized patient advocate, combining creative and technical expertise to promote participatory medicine and patient-centered, AI-enabled healthcare. Named a White House Champion of Change for Precision Medicine by President Obama in 2015, he advocates for patient rights and health data access while managing his own cardiac condition. Hugo serves on the NIH’s All of Us Research Program Steering Committee, co-leads patient engagement for PCORI’s THRIVE trial, and advises UCSF/UC Berkeley’s Computational Precision Health program. A TEDx Cambridge speaker, his advocacy has been featured in national media and scientific publications. Hugo lives in Oakland, California, with his husband, elderly father, and Memphis the cat.

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Liz Salmi is the Communications & Patient Initiatives Director for OpenNotes. In this role, Liz helps clinicians, hospitals and health systems understand through “the patient’s eyes” the changing nature of patient-clinician communication in an age of growing transparency. Her research areas of interest include: the effects of transparency on patient-clinician communication, stakeholder engagement, research dissemination, and the role of social media in patient-clinician-researcher collaborations.

As a person living with a low grade malignant brain tumor, Liz is passionate about helping all people engage in their own health care by improving their experience as patients. Over the last 17 years she has been: a research subject; an advisor in patient stakeholder groups; a leader in “patient engagement” research initiatives; and an innovator, educator and investigator in national educational and research projects.

In addition to her work with OpenNotes, Liz led the Brain Cancer Quality of Life Collaborative, a multi-stakeholder group dedicated to advancing science and improving the quality of life for people with malignant brain tumors. In fall 2021, members of the BCQoLC team (along with established investigators), were awarded a $12.8 million Center Grant from the National Cancer Institute to determine optimal methods for patient enrollment in a brain tumor registry.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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During this conversation, recorded at the UC Berkeley/JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in Taipei, Claudia and Fred discuss:

1. How Fred missed the Nobel Prize call while off-grid camping
2. His shifting goals in retirement post Nobel win
3. Why he chose biotech: collaboration, speed, and being "wrong fast"
4. The deeper threat to science: funding vs. trust, and his surprise in Sweden

Fred says he’s excited to see what other advances are possible in what he calls “the early innings” of scientific discovery:

“As humans, we're really good at solving technological problems. If we know what the problem is, historically, we're pretty good at figuring out an answer. [We’re] pretty confident now that we know the problem in peripheral tolerance, that is the breakdown of our immune system recognizing our own tissues. Now we know what at least part of that problem is, we'll be able to engineer our way into a solution.”

Relevant Links

See more about Fred’s Nobel win and read the UCLA press release

Fred’s Nobel prize lecture

See Fred and his co-laureates accept their prize

Read more about Fred’s 2025 co-laureates Mary E. Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi

About Our Guest

Fred Ramsdell, PhD, is a veteran biotechnology leader in immunology with nearly three decades of experience and was named a winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. A co-founder of Sonoma Biotherapeutics, Dr. Ramsdell was the former Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and current Scientific Advisory Board Chair of the Company.

Dr. Ramsdell earned his doctoral degree in microbiology and immunology from the University of California, Los Angeles and holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and cell biology from the University of California, San Diego. Following a fellowship at the NIH, Dr. Ramsdell joined Immunex studying T cell activation and tolerance, with a focus on gene discovery and functional characterization. He later joined Darwin Molecular (which was later acquired by Celltech R&D) to establish the immunology program. Amongst other programs, he led the team that discovered and characterized FoxP3, a gene critical to the function of regulatory T cells. Dr. Ramsdell joined ZymoGenetics in 2004, where he led teams studying novel proteins with potential regulatory activity in lymphoid cells. In 2008, Novo Nordisk brought on Dr. Ramsdell to help establish the company’s new Inflammation Research Center in Seattle and lead the Immunobiology group. Prior to SonomaBio, Dr. Ramsdell was the CSO at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) where he helped to build and advance multiple research programs from the inception of the Institute.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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Kunal and Claudia discuss:

1. The city’s move to unify fragmented and siloed outreach teams
2. The importance of shifting accountability and decision-making to the front lines
3. How San Francisco’s strategy is leveraging the community supports in CalAIM
4. Why solutions need to reflect the intersecting nature of the homeless problem

Kunal reminds us that ending the cycle of homelessness is far more complicated than just finding housing:

“This is more than a homelessness crisis, it's an intersecting homelessness, behavioral health, and drug addiction crisis that we need to bring our healthcare system and our social service system in closer alignment… We need to reorient our Public Health strategies to not only support those in crisis, but to think about the broader communities and neighborhoods.”

Relevant Links

1. See Mayor Lurie’s thoughts on the “Breaking the Cycle” initiative
2. Get more information on the City’s new RV parking restrictions
3. Read the Crankstart report on tackling homelessness in San Francisco

About Our Guest

Kunal Modi is the policy chief of health, homelessness, and family services in San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration. In this role, he coordinates eight agencies, including the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, the Department of Children, Youth and Families and the Department of Early Childhood, while also serving as liaison to San Francisco Unified School District and City College. He brings extensive experience in cross-agency collaboration and reform, aiming to deliver compassionate, effective solutions for the city’s most pressing health, housing, and family needs. Before joining City Hall, he spent over 11 years as a partner at McKinsey & Company’s Bay Area office and previously served on the boards of Larkin Street Youth Services and St. Anthony’s Foundation. His educational background includes an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, an M.P.P. from Harvard Kennedy School, and a B.A. from Northwestern University.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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Claudia and Sean talk about:

1. Omada’s “full stack” approach to chronic care
2. What Omada’s IPO signals for digital health’s future
3. Why GLP1s are a catalyst for behavior change
4. How employers have quietly driven healthcare innovation

Sean says for Omada to actually shift what consumers pay out of pocket every month for their premiums we need to make big changes:

“Affordability is the thing… That's the burden we're bearing as a country… And so, the only way to bring down healthcare costs are completely transformed care models. That's the only way… Thank goodness we're at a moment where those models are being supported and being scaled nationally. Thank goodness we're at a moment where technologies like AI can help add even more efficiency and help scale… Our only way out are different care models [that] leverage new technologies.”

Relevant Links

Access more info in Omada’s research library

Get details on Omada Health’s S1 IPO Filing

See the GLP-1 research Sean mentions: Omada members maintain weight loss after discontinuing GLPs

Get more info on the CMS ACCESS model

About Our Guest

Sean Duffy co-founded Omada in 2011 with the aim of merging medical trends and cutting edge technology to revolutionize health care of chronic disease as we know it. Today, he proudly serves as CEO and has been instrumental in steering Omada toward global recognition, such as being hailed a potential “medical triumph” by The New York Times, and one of Fast Company’s 50 most innovative companies in the world. A longtime devotee of healthcare and technology, Sean also founded a largely automated lifestyle business around Excel Everest, the interactive Microsoft Excel training tool he created. He formerly covered healthcare innovation as writer and editor for Medgadget, a popular medical technology blog. As CEO of Omada, Sean cares deeply about honing the organization’s exceptional products, values-driven approach to healthcare, and the innovative ways in which primary care can continue to better humanity. More recently, Sean has been spending more and more of his free time learning how to build and fly first-person view drones.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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Claudia and Elizabeth dive into:

1. The critical link between fair worker wages and childcare capacity
2. How New Mexico’s early childhood trust fund is helping the state stay the course
3. Why NYC and other cities and states want to replicate New Mexico’s move
4. Unexpected allies in the state’s quest to provide free childcare

Elizabeth underscores this is not only good social policy but also a smart financial investment:

“If we believe the Heckman equation, if we believe the economists coming out of the Federal Reserve, this is your best investment. If it's a 7 % return, that's better than anyone's getting on any portfolio. It could be as high as a 13 % return… And so it's not going to be a question of ”How can we afford it?”, but “How can we not afford to invest in universal child care?””

Relevant Links

1. Find out more about New Mexico’s Childhood Education and Care Department
2. Read more about Universal Childcare in New Mexico
3. What is the Heckman Equation?
4. See information on the “Developing Futures” Campaign

About Our Guest

Elizabeth Groginsky has more than two decades of executive leadership experience administering public and private human service organizations at the national, state and local levels. She previously served as the assistant superintendent of early learning for the District of Columbia, a role she held for nearly five years where she administered a $160 million annual budget that funded programs to ensure equal access to quality services for the District’s most vulnerable children and their families. The District of Columbia was first in the nation in 2009 to pursue universal pre-K and today has the highest U.S. participation rate, with 85 percent of all 4-year-olds and 75 percent of 3-year-olds.

She previously directed early childhood education for United Way Worldwide, where she helped expand the number of communities collecting and using population-based early childhood data; and she was the first executive director of the Early Childhood Data Collaborative, a national coalition to improve state policies and practices in the development and use of early childhood data system.

Her experience with Head Start programs is extensive: She began as a family services coordinator, later administered a county program and then directed the Head Start Collaboration Office for Colorado. In Washington, D.C., she oversaw one of only eight state Early Head Start Child Care Partnership grants.

Groginsky earned a master’s degree in social sciences from the University of Colorado at Denver and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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In this episode, Paul and Claudia discuss:

• His conviction that reducing healthcare costs is essential to averting a national fiscal crisis
• The upside-down economics that make PBMs reject cheaper drug prices
• Paul’s candid advice on what it takes to be a courageous leader in a dysfunctional system

Paul Markovich challenges healthcare leaders to shift from explaining high costs to being accountable for lowering them:

“Almost everybody in the entire value chain, whether it's health plans or hospitals or all the way through, they want to explain why healthcare is so expensive and why there's this inflation rate as if that absolves them of any responsibility to make it different. And so, what I really want is accountability, and a level of accountability that doesn't exist yet in our industry, to say, 'Hey, we own this' ". 

Relevant Links

Part 1: Listen to our episode “New Life for Old Drug with David Fajgenbaum”

Part 2: Listen to our episode “Lessons in Disruption with Mark Cuban”

Rethinking how Americans get affordable medications

California’s new PBM reform law

About Our Guest

Paul Markovich is president and chief executive office of Ascendiun, a nonprofit corporate entity as part of the new parent to the family of organizations that includes Blue Shield of California.

Paul Markovich was president and chief executive officer at Blue Shield of California, a nonprofit health plan with $25 billion in annual revenue, serving 6 million members in the state's commercial, individual, and government markets. Paul launched and led numerous initiatives to drive innovation and help reimagine health care, including funding support for a statewide provider directory to make it easier for Californians to find physicians and facilities in their plan; supporting the development of a statewide health information network for patients’ records, enabling more seamless and holistic care; and investing in a partnership with the California Medical Association to help physicians pilot new care delivery models and leverage technology.

At Blue Shield, Paul previously served as chief operating officer (responsible for healthcare services, network management, e-business, marketing, product development, and customer operations). He was senior vice president of the large group and CalPERS business units. He led the company’s product development unit, introducing numerous products and services such as the first California Health Maintenance Organization to allow self-referrals to specialists and initiating online access to member benefits.

He currently serves on the board of the Chicago-based Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the national umbrella organization across the country. Together, these plans provide health coverage for more than 100 million Americans. Paul also serves on the board of America’s Health Insurance Plans.

Paul is a North Dakota native and Rhodes Scholar with a master’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University. He is a graduate of Colorado College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Political Economy and played Division I hockey.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-markovich/

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

In this episode, Mark Cuban pitches:

• That direct contracting with hospitals is his next healthcare disruption
• Why he thinks medical schools should be free
• How financial audits are a first step to lowering healthcare prices
• Why price transparency is contagious

Mark thinks the best way to make change is from outside the system:

“What makes [Cost Plus Drugs] radical is when we started, everybody presumed and expected that we would work within the system. That we would partner with the big three wholesalers that control 98% of the sale of drugs - that we would partner with the big three PBMs that control 85% of prescriptions. And, we did the exact opposite because we knew they were the problem.”

Relevant Links

• The Cost Plus Drugs mission statement
• Read and watch Mark Cuban testimony for the Senate Special Committee on Aging 
• More on Mark’s hospital negotiation strategy

About Our Guest

Mark Cuban is an investor who lives for his family, his "Shark Tank" companies and the Dallas Mavericks. He is the owner of the 2011 World Champion Dallas Mavericks and bestselling author of "How to Win at the Sport of Business," and was an entrepreneur from the early age of 12 when he sold garbage bags door to door. Today, Cuban is the highly successful entrepreneur and investor with an ever-growing portfolio of businesses.

A lifelong entrepreneur and investor, Cuban has started and built multiple industry-changing organizations including Costplusdrugs.com, which sells medications at industry low pricing with total cost transparency, which he founded with Dr. Alex Oshmansky. Named a winner of the GQ Men of the Year in 2006 and included in The New York Times Magazine's Year in Ideas, Cuban is recognized as being among the most influential people in both the cable and sports industries. He may be best known for his purchase of the Dallas Mavericks on Jan. 4, 2000. Under his leadership, the team's home games have become a total entertainment experience.

Prior to his purchase of the Mavericks, Cuban co-founded the first commercial streaming company AudioNet, which became Broadcast.com, the leading provider of multimedia and streaming on the Internet. Broadcast.com was sold to Yahoo! Inc. in July 2000. MicroSolutions, a leading national systems integrator, was co-founded by Cuban and partner Martin Woodall in 1983, and later sold to CompuServe.

In 2001, Cuban founded AXS TV (www.axs.tv) and sister network, HDNet Movies, the very first all high-definition TV network. He also co-owns the Landmark Theater chain, Magnolia Pictures, Magnolia Home Video and 2929 Productions along with partner Todd Wagner. With the release of the movie "Bubble" in 2005, Magnolia and Landmark Theaters pioneered the release of the movie's "day and date," meaning the movie was released in theaters, on TV (HDNet Movies) and on DVD all on the same day. Taking this process one step further, Cuban created the Ultra VOD platform, releasing movies to video on demand on both cable and satellite up to four weeks prior to their release in theaters. As an executor producer for 2929 and HDNet Films, Cuban has been nominated for seven Academy Awards® for "Enron," "The Smartest Guys In the Room" and "Good Night and Good Luck." He later sold HDNet in 2018.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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David and Claudia discussed: 

• How Every Cure is using AI to test 75 million possible disease-drug combinations 
• The perverse incentives that keep generic drug repurposing in the shadows
• Why the hardest part of innovation isn’t discovery, it’s getting proven treatments into clinical practice

Repurposing existing drugs makes so much sense. But as David points out, there’s no market for it:

“Once a drug is generic.. the price is going to plummet… And even if you were to double the sales of your drug because you found a new disease area, now you've gone from 1% to 2% of what you got before… So there's no incentive whatsoever for our system to find a new use for a generic drug. Zero incentive.”

Relevant Links

• Learn more about Every Cure
• Read David’s book Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope Into Action
• Watch David's TEDTalk 
• Listen to David’s Podcast interview with Adam Grant
• Get info on the Dada2 Foundation
• Watch a video on Matt Might’s story 

About Our Guest

David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, is co-Founder & President of Every Cure and a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is one of the youngest faculty members ever to receive tenure at Penn Medicine. He is also the national bestselling author of Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope Into Action, which is being adapted into a film by Forrest Gump producer Wendy Finerman. 

During medical school, Fajgenbaum discovered a treatment that saved his own life and founded the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network. He has advanced 13 more repurposed treatments for cancers and rare diseases and co-founded Every Cure to unlock more hidden cures from existing medicines which has received over $100M from ARPA-H and TED’s Audacious Project. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA. 

One of the youngest recipients of multiple top NIH and FDA grants, Fajgenbaum has authored over 100 scientific papers in leading journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and The Journal of Clinical Investigation. He has been profiled by The New York Times, Good Morning America, TODAY, and Forbes 30 Under 30 and has received numerous honors, including the 2016 Atlas Award alongside then VP Joe Biden, 2022 NDRI Service to Science Award alongside Nobel Laureates Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, 2023 Philadelphia Citizen of the Year Award, and selection to the 2025 TIME100 Health list of the world’s most influential people in health. Fajgenbaum earned a BS from Georgetown University, MSc from the University of Oxford, MD from the University of Pennsylvania, and MBA from The Wharton School.

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We discuss:

• The book's core ideas: ending urban gun violence with redemptive love
• How public health overlooks community strengths by fixating on risk
• Why Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety sits in government - but outside policing

DeVone says that the greatest demonstration of this approach has always been Richmond: 

“From the moment we implemented the Peacemaker Fellowship in 2010, within 18 to 24 months after we did that, there were dramatic, precipitous reductions in gun violence… Our argument has been [that] when you get the right people to get at the right people the right way over a long period of time, here's living proof and demonstration of what can happen…In 2014, we achieved a 40 year low in gun violence [in Richmond].” 

Relevant Links

• Read Jason and DeVone’s book “Advancing Peace: Ending Urban Gun Violence through the Power of Redemptive Love”
• Listen to an episode from our archives with Megan Ranney on gun violence as a public health issue
• Check out Richmond, California’s Office of Neighborhood Safety
• Read more about Jason Corburn’s work at UC Berkeley
• Get more information on DeVone’s organization Advance Peace

About Our Guests

DeVone Boggan serves as Founder and CEO of Advance Peace. Advance Peace interrupts gun violence in American urban neighborhoods by providing transformational opportunities to young men involved in lethal firearm offenses and placing them in a high-touch, personalized fellowship. By working with and supporting a targeted group of individuals at the core of gun hostilities, Advance Peace bridges the gap between anti-violence programming and a hard-to-reach population at the center of violence in urban areas, thus breaking the cycle of gun hostilities and altering the trajectory of these men’s lives. 

DeVone is the former Neighborhood Safety Director and founding director of the Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) for the City of Richmond, California. The ONS is a government, non-law enforcement agency that is charged with reducing firearm assaults and associated deaths in Richmond. Under his leadership as Neighborhood Safety Director, the city experienced a 71% reduction in gun violence between 2007 when the office was created and 2016. His work with ONS has been recognized in national publications and media, including the New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, Detroit Free Press, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, PBS NewsHour, NPR, NBC Nightly News, ABC Nightline, CNBC, MSNBC, and CNN. 

Prior to his tenure in Richmond, DeVone served as Policy Director for Safe Passages, a nonprofit public/private partnership focused on improving urban health outcomes for children, youth and families.

Jason Corburn is a Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and School of Public Health. He directs the Center for Global Healthy Cities and co-directs the joint Master of City Planning (MCP) and Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the links between environmental health and social justice in cities, notions of expertise in science-based policy making, and the role of local knowledge in addressing environmental and public health problems. Professor Corburn’s research and practice works to build partnerships between urban residents, professional scientists and decision-makers in order to collaboratively generate policy and planning solutions that improve the qualities of cities and the well-being of residents, particularly the poor and people of color.

Professor Corburn is currently leading the evaluation of the Advance Peace, urban gun violence reduction program. This project is operating in 10 cities across the US, hires formerly incarcerated residents to act as ‘credible messengers’ to interrupt conflicts and mentor those at the center of gun violence in each city.  The work takes a public health approach to eliminating gun violence, which means addressing the traumas experienced in disinvested in neighborhoods and helping to heal impacted people and places.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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Please note: this conversation happened before HR1 was passed, so big Medicaid cuts were a threat but not yet a reality when we spoke.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Lessons from Todd Park in the early days of athenahealth
• How to turn good ideas into great businesses
• Nancy’s advice in an era of policy disruption: keep on building and proving value
• The lesson Kaiser Permanente is still teaching us

Nancy reminds us that in reality, even a brilliant idea needs to have ROI built in:

“We look for entrepreneurs, for innovators, who have really defined a way in which to find a cohort of patients,  it could be pregnant Medicaid moms... And they have identified if they apply a certain clinical process consistently to that population, they will get a consistently good outcome, quality outcome, and they can do it in a sustainable [way] at a sustainable price.”

Relevant Links

• Read Oak HC/FT’s AI Investment Policy
• Explore businesses Nancy mentioned from Oak HC/FT’s investment portfolio:
• Maven Clinic
• Oshi Health 

About Our Guest

Nancy Brown is a General Partner at Oak HC/FT, a leading venture and growth equity firm investing in transformative healthcare and fintech companies. Since joining Oak HC/FT at its inception in 2014, Ms. Brown has focused on identifying and supporting technology-enabled healthcare services that deliver measurable clinical and financial impact. She focuses on growth equity and early-stage venture investments in healthcare, serving on the boards of innovative companies such as Firefly Health, Groups Recover Together, InterWell Health, Maven Clinic, Oshi Health, Regard, Unite Us, and Wayspring. Her portfolio also includes Noom, TurningPoint Healthcare Solutions, Limeade (ASX: LME), OncoHealth, and OODA Health.

Ms. Brown brings over three decades of operational and leadership experience to her investment role. Prior to Oak HC/FT, she was Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at McKesson Technology Solutions and Chief Growth Officer at MedVentive (acquired by McKesson in 2012). Previously, she served as Senior Vice President of Clinical Services and Corporate Development at athenahealth, and earlier held senior roles at McKesson and Harvard Community Health Plan. She also co-founded Abaton.com, one of the first web-based clinical solution companies, which was later acquired by McKesson.

A graduate of the University of New Hampshire (B.S. in Zoology) and Northeastern University (MBA), Ms. Brown is an active mentor and advisor. She serves on Northeastern’s D’Amore‑McKim School of Business Dean’s Executive Council and is involved in the Roux Institute’s Future of Healthcare Founder Residency program.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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We discuss:

• What Shonda Rhimes taught Zoanne about standing in power
• Making it as a Hollywood “showrunner”
• Why public health leaders should lean into storytelling

Zoanne reminds us that stories - even about fictional characters - have the ability to help us move the world: 

“I think just having that, that feeling of belonging, that feeling of these are my people, and I am very interested in what they're doing and thinking is just a great way for the media in Hollywood to have impact.”

Relevant Links

• Watch the two episode Zoanne mentioned are her favourites: “Fight the Power” (Season 17, Episode 5) and “The Time Warp” (Season 6, Episode 15)
• See Zoanne’s filmography

About Our Guest

Zoanne Clack is executive producer and showrunner for “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Station 19.” An emergency medicine physician turned TV writer and showrunner, Clack is best known for her influential writing roles on these critically acclaimed ABC-TV series, where she combines her medical background and artistic flair, offering a unique and authentic touch. As a writer/producer on "Grey's Anatomy" since the show began, she has played an integral role in the show's longevity and cultural impact. She uses her knowledge of entertainment education to promote global public health issues through the media, advocating for representation and inclusivity and providing diverse characterizations as well as poignant social commentary. Clack is co-chair of the Norman Lear Center’s Hollywood, Health & Society program at USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism and serves on the board or as an advisor of several global health groups.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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We discuss:

• How AI health agents could personalize and simplify care, especially for patients navigating complex health challenges
• Why government should act as both regulator and convener to shape the future of how we use AI in health
• Our failure to scale and implement big ideas because we keep adding new layers instead of simplifying

Karen underscored that AI-enabled robots will bring new ethical challenges:

“I think when robotics becomes more commonplace, that also raises some of the need for us to be very thoughtful as a society about the ethical challenges when there's a physical manifestation of the models that's not just in a computer screen or even through your glasses, but as the robots get more and more humanoid.”

Relevant Links

• Read the Forbes article on Karen’s tenure at Google 
• Watch a Video where Karen introduces “Check Up”
• Read the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials’ spotlight on Karen
• Read Karen’s article about “Public Health 3.0”
• Check out Karen’s Health Affairs article on the future of public health 

About Our Guest

Dr. Karen DeSalvo is a physician executive working at the intersection of medicine, public health, and information technology to help everyone, everywhere, live a healthier life. She leads a team of experts at Google who build helpful products, develop AI solutions focused on some of the biggest health challenges and bring information and insights to consumers, caregivers and communities with the aim of democratizing access to health and healthcare. She provides clinical leadership for Google employee health, including as part of the company COVID response team. Prior to joining Google, Dr. DeSalvo was National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Assistant Secretary for Health (Acting) in the Obama Administration. Dr. DeSalvo served as the New Orleans Health Commissioner following Hurricane Katrina and was previously Vice Dean for Community Affairs and Health Policy at the Tulane School of Medicine where she was a practicing internal medicine physician, educator, and researcher. She is co-founder of the National Alliance to Impact the Social Determinants of Health. Dr. DeSalvo serves on the Council of the National Academy of Medicine and the Board of Directors for Welltower.

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• David Zipper, Senior Fellow, MIT Mobility Initiative 
• Maya Petersen, Professor of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Computational Precision Health, UC Berkeley 
• Kody Kinsley, Senior Policy Advisor, Johns Hopkins University (former Secretary of HHS in North Carolina)
• Theresa Cullen, Director of Public Health, Pima County, AZ 
• Anne Zink, Lecturer & Senior Fellow, Yale School of Public Health (former Chief Medical Officer, Alaska
• Karen DeSalvo, former Chief Health Officer, Google 
• Palav Babaria,  Chief Quality and Medical Officer, California Department of Health Care Services 
• Jacey Cooper, President, Precision Health Strategies (former Medicaid Director in California)
• Pooja Mittal, Chief Health Equity Officer, Health Net
• Natalie Davis, Co-Founder and CEO, United States of Care
• Steve Downs, Co-Founder, Building H 
• Katie Drasser, CEO, Rock Health
• Zoanne Clack, Executive Producer, Grey’s Anatomy 

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Other 80 on YouTube so you never miss our video extras or special video episodes. 

We discuss:

• How she’s working to fix the broken investment cycle for women’s health
• Why impact—not just return—should guide the future of health innovation
• The big differentiator for youth mental health companies? Kids are at the table 

Katie reminds us that designing for the most overlooked ends up helping everyone:

“There's that theory – the curb cut theory – [that says] if you design for the most marginalized, if you design for the most overlooked, it's actually better for everybody. And so… how might we design for those most left out? And actually, the folks that are always included would actually benefit too.”

Relevant Links

• Visit the Rock Health website
• Listen to Podcast episode with Katie Drasser and Carolyn Witte
• Read the Rock Health report on women as digital health consumers
• Check out MindRight Health’s website - the youth mental health texting resource Katie mentioned in this episode

About Our Guest

Katie is an entrepreneurial leader committed to equality and justice who has launched groundbreaking, inclusive programs that address complex global issues with a focus on public health innovation and the role of innovative financing and leadership in systems change. As the CEO of RockHealth.org, she leads a team of experts in health equity, social enterprise and design to encourage more equitable innovation in digital health. Previously, Katie curated health content for the Aspen Ideas Festival and was Managing Director of the Aspen Global Innovators Group, where she led global leadership programs to address poverty alleviation and human rights. Katie has worked nationally and around the world on initiatives including HIV/AIDS treatment strategies in Romania, private health services delivery in Myanmar, and the scale up of Kenya’s national emergency medical system. She also built a range of start-ups, designing a network of charter schools, and developing Good Capital, a venture fund that invests millions in social enterprises like The Hub Bay Area and the Social Capital Markets Conference.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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We discuss:

• Why our current wellness craze mirrors 1930s pre-Nazi Germany
• How Abraham Flexner completely changed how we teach medicine in the US for better – and for worse
• Why the spiritual and community void left by declining religious participation leads people to look to the wellness industry for both

Amy says what attracts people to the modern fitness class has parallels to religious practices:

“So if you look at what happens in ritual religious gatherings… You see a lot of that replicated in a lot of these boutique fitness settings. You have ritual, you have music, you have ecstatic movement, you have charismatic leaders, you have a sermon. And these sermons have increasingly moved away from talk of muffin tops and bikini bodies and losing that whatever it is, to kindness, community, thinking about your place in the world, thinking about taking the energy that you are building up in that room and spreading it forward. ”

Relevant Links

• Buy Amy’s book “How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time”
• Read this Wikipedia page on Martine Rothblatt’s robot replica of her wife Bina
• Check out  this article on the impact of the Flexner report on US medicine
• Read the book “McMindfulness” Amy mentions in the episode
• Sign up for Lamar’s SoulCycle class

About Our Guest

Amy Larocca is an award-winning American journalist. She spent 20 years working at New York Magazine as both Fashion Director and Editor at Large. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Town & Country, and the London Review of Books, among others. She lives with her family in New York and North London.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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We discuss:

• The surprising finding that connected communities were more resilient during the COVID pandemic
• Kasley’s 100+ day experiment with acts of kindness
• How small investments in social health have big ripple effects
• Her nuanced views on AI companions

Kasley talks about how vulnerability is key to building trust and human connection:

“When you share something a little vulnerable that goes beyond… surface level and small talk, that is like this magical way of deepening connections, right? It builds trust, it builds intimacy, it makes us relatable, it helps us get to know each other better. And so … there I am with a complete stranger who… I've maybe shared something on stage or in conversation, they're now sharing something really intimate and vulnerable about their life and that just creates this beautiful moment. ”

Relevant Links

• Grab Kasley’s book “The Art and Science of Connection”
• See Kasley’s TED talk: Why Social Health is Key to Happiness and Longevity
• Get more info on the APA poll on social connection
• Read an Article on Kasley’s 108-day experiment with acts of kindness
• Read the Surgeon General’s advisory on loneliness as a pandemic
• See this Article on Scan Health Plan’s “Togetherness” program

About Our Guest

Kasley Killam is a leading expert in social health and author of The Art and Science of Connection: Why Social Health is the Missing Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier. As a Harvard-trained social scientist, 2X TED speaker, sought-after advisor, and award-winning founder, Killam has been dedicated to improving well-being through human connection for nearly 15 years. Globally recognized for her thought leadership on social health, Killam’s collaborations with top organizations like Google, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the World Economic Forum contribute to building more socially healthy products, workplaces, and communities. Discover her insights in outlets like The New York Times, Forbes, NPR, CNBC, and The Washington Post and join her newsletter community at www.kasleykillam.com. 

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Other 80 on YouTube so you never miss our video extras or special video episodes! 

We discuss:

• The surprising fact that two-thirds of KP’s members (who are mostly covered by employer insurance) have at least one unmet social need
• How the Common Health Coalition is building bridges between healthcare and public health
• What KP is doing to tackle a big problem limiting the mental health workforce: only 57% of masters trained therapists get licensed
• What it took for KP to achieve carbon neutrality

Bechara reminds us that bridge-building is a crucial part of this community health work:

“We need more and more bridges between public health and healthcare... [They have] operated as two separate disciplines operating in their own silos... [When] there is a public health emergency we build more bridges, we strengthen those bridges that already exist. And then when that public health emergency subsides, we all retreat into our own disciplines and we continue that siloed journey.”

Relevant Links

• Read about the NAM initiative on climate change and health
• Explore why the US needs more community health workers from this article
• Learn more about the Common Health Coalition
• Dive into details on KP’s sustainability journey

About Our Guest

Dr. Bechara Choucair, MD, is executive vice president and chief community health officer for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Hospitals — known as Kaiser Permanente, one of America’s leading integrated health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Dr. Choucair oversees the organization’s national community health efforts and philanthropic giving activities aimed at improving the health of its 12.2 million members and the 68 million people within the communities it serves.

Previously, Dr. Choucair served as senior vice president, Safety Net and Community Health, at Trinity Health, and was the commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health.

Dr. Choucair, a family physician by training, completed his Family Practice Residency at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He holds an MD from the American University of Beirut and a master’s degree in health care management from the University of Texas at Dallas.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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We discuss:

• The broad sweep of FDA’s purview from drugs and medical devices to cosmetics, food, tobacco and dog food
• Concern that the FDA is now “decapitated and eviscerated” from the massive and multiple rounds of dismissals
• While most industries want less regulation, the pharma industry wants more information and guidance from the FDA
• Califf has been affiliated with Duke for 50 of its 100 years, but a part of his heart is still with Clemson

What would Califf’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda be?

“We need to develop reliable, repetitive sources of information that help people do things that are healthy and beneficial. That part of MAHA I like a lot…The second thing is… I'm developing connections with people who are thinking differently about primary care because I think everybody agrees there's no way you can take the current workforce and deliver what's needed. So it's got to be linked up with AI and digital technologies, but also with a very different looking workforce that gets paid differently, has more respect.”

Relevant Links

• Read Califf’s WSJ opinion letter: “Work with the Bureaucracy, Not Against It”
• Peter Marks’ resignation letter 
• NYT article on the impact of FDA layoffs
• Califf’s “Public Health on Call” podcast episode on the state of the FDA 
• Opinion article  from 7 previous FDA commissioners on how recent changes are undermining credibility of the FDA

About Our Guest

Robert M. Califf, MD served as FDA Commmissioner under Presidents Biden and Obama. Califf is a nationally recognized expert in cardiovascular medicine, health outcomes research, health care quality, and clinical research, and a leader in the growing field of translational research. Prior to rejoining the FDA in 2022, Califf was head of medical strategy and senior advisor at Alphabet, contributing to strategy and policy for its health subsidiaries Verily Life Sciences and Google Health. Prior to Alphabet, he was professor of medicine and vice chancellor for clinical and translational research at Duke University, director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute, and founding director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute. Dr. Califf is a graduate of Duke University School of Medicine. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a fellowship in cardiology at Duke.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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We discuss:

• The sound economics behind the Medicaid expansion in Louisiana
• What she learned from her mentor, astronaut John Glenn
• How to close the primary care gap for children and parents 
• Whether ultra processed foods are the next tobacco

Rebekah shared about an exchange with Elon Musk on the short sightedness of Medicaid cuts:

“So Nest came out with our savings numbers. We put out some really good information about the health of children and the opportunities. And Elon Musk retweeted it. So as a result of that, we actually got a lot of press. But I wrote back to him and said, ‘I'm glad you like this concept. And just remember, don't cut health care for children because we'll be paying far more for that than you will ever save.’ ”

Relevant Links

• Read more about Nest Health
• Watch: Dr. Rebekah Gee on what entrepreneurs need to know about Medicaid
• Learn about Alaska’s Nuka system of care
• Evidence from the Nurse Family Partnership about the impact of home-based care

About Our Guest

Dr. Rebekah Gee is the founder and CEO of Nest Health, a technology-enabled whole-family primary care provider providing care at home and virtually to Americans who struggle to receive comprehensive care. Previously, Dr. Gee served as Secretary of Health for the State of Louisiana. In that cabinet-level role, she led the expansion of Medicaid. As Secretary, she was responsible for nearly half the state budget including Medicaid, public health, aging and adult services, licensure, sanitation, disability services, and a nearly 2,000 bed state hospital system. As Secretary, she developed a first-in-the-nation subscription model for the drugs that cure Hepatitis C that is being used as a national and international model for increased drug access and affordability.

Dr. Gee has served as an advisor to multiple Governors, presidential campaigns, and policy efforts at the state and national level. Her board service includes medical advisory support of public companies Select Quote and 3D systems. She has also served as a board member or advisor to Ready Responders, Ouva, Noble, NCQA, NQF, IHI, the Penn Center for Behavioral Economics, and the Duke-Margolis Institute.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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We discuss:

• The ABC’s of health for all: agency, belonging and social contracts
• How California communities applied this framework to dramatically change school climate and reduce suspensions
• The role of narrative in shaping policy choices towards belonging or exclusion

Tony digs into why power matters in health:

“We're talking about essentially community-level power, what we refer to as community agency, and we basically theorized that if we could build social, political and economic power in a critical mass of people in 14 low-income communities that have documented health disparities, that we could improve the health status of those populations over a 10-year period…  We weren't thinking that there was something that we needed to do to people. In other words, it wasn't like increasing access to healthcare or, you know, enhancing the quality of public health education. This was fundamentally about unleashing the power of communities to [determine how resources are distributed].“

Relevant Links

• Read about our UC Berkeley School of Public Health Social Impact Fellows (Tony included)
• Learn more about the California Endowment
• Visit Dr. Tony Iton’s website
• Read Dr. Tony Iton’s “Understanding How Health Happens – Your Zip Code is More Important Than Your Genetic Code” by Dr. Tony Iton, MD, JD, MPH and Robert K. Ross, MD.
• Order “Advocacy for Public Health Policy Change: An Urgent Imperative” which is co-authored by Dr. Tony Iton

About Our Guest

Dr. Tony Iton is a Social Impact Fellow and lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He was the Senior Vice President of Programs & Partnerships at The California Endowment from October 2009 to June 2024.

Prior to his appointment at The Endowment, Iton served from 2003 as both the director and County Health Officer for the Alameda County Public Health Department. In that role, he oversaw the creation of an innovative public health practice designed to eliminate health disparities by tackling the root causes of poor health that limit quality of life and lifespan in many of California's low-income communities.

Iton also served for three years as director of Health and Human Services and School Medical Advisor for the City of Stamford, Connecticut. Concurrent to that, he also served as a physician in internal medicine for Stamford Hospital's HIV Clinic. In addition, Iton served for five years as a primary care physician for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Iton's varied career also includes past service as a staff attorney and Health Policy analyst for the West Coast regional office of Consumer's Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.

Iton, who has been published in numerous public health and medical publications, is a regular public health lecturer and keynote speaker at conferences across the nation. He earned his B.S. in Neurophysiology, with honors, from McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, his J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, and his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtonyiton/

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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We discuss:

• What the working poor really need: breathing room in their budgets to afford healthy food
• Operating a startup within government
• How collaboration across Covered California, Medi-Cal and CalPERS – which together cover 45% of Californians – will drive faster and more aligned health improvement in California

Monica’s team uses experiments and user research to shape every aspect of the program:

“But I do think in our DNA is this idea of innovation. In-house, we have a research team that does randomized controlled trials. We're committed to hyper transparency. Almost all of our data is released. We stratify it by everything we can think of to really identify where there might be pockets of coverage that aren't there or outcomes that are suboptimal. And we do a lot of deep listening with consumers and with the community to help inform what we do.“

Relevant Links

• Read more about Covered California’s Innovative Program to Improve Population Health
• See the details on Covered California’s Data and Research tools
• Announcement of the launch of Covered Californians Population Health Investments
• More info on how Covered California uses email nudges for enrollment

About Our Guest

Dr. S. Monica Soni is the Chief Medical Officer, and a Chief Deputy Executive Director at Covered California, leading the organization’s Health Equity and Quality Transformation division. In this capacity she is responsible for health equity, health care strategy, medical policy, and other clinical operations to continuously improve not only the health services provided through Covered California’s contracted health plans, but also California’s delivery system.

She is a board-certified internal medicine physician with more than a decade of experience working in both inpatient and outpatient settings and continues to see patients. She is an Associate Professor within the UCLA Department of Medicine and the Charles R. Drew University Department of Internal Medicine, where she is committed to residency diversification and pipeline development.

Prior to joining Covered California, Dr. Soni served as Associate Chief Medical Officer within Evolent Health focused on the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective specialty care for the over 16 million supported Medicaid lives across the United States. During her time at the organization, she played a critical role in clinical informatics, provider engagement, value-based strategies and innovation. Dr. Soni also served as the Director of Specialty Care for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, the second-largest municipal health system in the United States. There she ensured the delivery of timely and equitable specialty care across four hospitals, 20 ambulatory care clinics, the correctional health system and more than 200 community partners. She also worked as the Director of Continuity Care for Martin Luther King, Jr. Outpatient Center, where she led primary care, urgent care and transitions of care. 

A graduate of Harvard College, Dr. Soni graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. She received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco with a focus in primary care. In addition, Dr. Soni was a fellow in the California Health Care Foundation Leadership Program and the Carol Emmott Foundation Fellowship. She is currently a board member for Mercy Housing California, a leading affordable housing organization, and previously served as a commissioner for the Los Angeles County Hospital and Health Care Delivery Commission.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Other 80 on YouTube so you never miss our video extras or special video episodes!

Relevant Links

If you’re interested in hiring one of the amazing leaders who shared their story in this episode, connect with them on LinkedIn:

Andrew Lennox: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlennoxmi/

Aileen Wood: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aileen-wood-163585108/

Jesus Morillo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesusmurillo97/

Amy Paris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-paris-4950831/

Ashley Hackett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-hackett/

Jennifer Robinson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-robinson-phd-mph/

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

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Kody called it a “self-licking ice cream cone”—cuts that destabilize the government, leading to further cuts. Larry warned of formula battles that will soon erupt. Katie laid out the devastating effects on state budgets.

We’ve also released this episode as a full video episode on YouTube. Subscribe to The Other 80 YouTube channel for video extras, video episodes and viral healthcare policy content. Click here to watch this episode in full.

Watch the full VIDEO version of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X110GShMTtE&t=52s

Relevant Links

• KFF: The Public’s View on Potential Changes to Medicaid
• KFF: Impact of Medicaid Per Capita Cap 
• Kody Kinsley testimony to Congress on Medicaid
• Pre-election episode with Larry Levitt
• KFF: Can Republicans cut $880 Billion without Slashing Medicaid?
• CBPP: Impact of Medicaid Cuts
• CHCF: Defending Medi-Cal in 2025

About Our Guests

Katie Heidorn is the director of state health policy at CHCF, where she leverages the foundation’s data, expertise, and partnerships to help California’s state government make informed decisions about health care. Katie is based in CHCF’s Sacramento office.

Katie has nearly two decades of experience working in health policy, government, and nonprofits and is a skilled leader, facilitator, and communicator. She comes to CHCF after more than two years as executive director for the Insure the Uninsured Project (ITUP). Before that, Katie was the government affairs advocate for Health Net and the development director and policy lead at the nonprofit California Coverage and Health Initiatives. Katie spent a decade in California state government, including as a deputy secretary for the California Health and Human Services Agency and principal consultant in the Senate Appropriations Committee. She is also an alumna of the California Senate Fellows Program.

Katie received her master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California and bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Comparative Literature from the University of California, Davis.

Source: https://www.chcf.org/person/katie-heidorn/

Kody Kinsley served as Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services from January 2022 to January 2025. In his role, he led operational aspects of COVID-19 response, including purchasing and distribution of personal protective equipment, scaling access to testing, and contact tracing. In addition to the COVID-19 response, Kinsley leads North Carolina's behavioral health and intellectual and developmental disability policies and systems. His work focuses on re-designing the public insurance system, combating the opioid epidemic, and improving operations of state organizations and the broader delivery system. His policy efforts have focused on supporting trauma-informed and resilient communities and schools, diverting and treating justice-involved populations, and increasing community levels of care. Kinsley’s past experience spans the public and private sectors, including positions at the White House, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, leading operations for a behavioral health care service provider in western North Carolina, and most recently serving as the presidentially-appointed Assistant Secretary for Management for the United States Department of the Treasury. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Brevard College and his master of public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Source: https://www.sog.unc.edu/about/faculty-and-staff/kody-kinsley

Larry Levitt is the executive vice president for health policy, overseeing KFF’s policy work on Medicare, Medicaid, the health care marketplace, the Affordable Care Act, racial equity, women’s health, and global health. He previously was editor-in-chief of kaisernetwork.org, which was KFF’s online health policy news and information service and directed KFF’s communications. Levitt, along with Dr. Mollyann Brodie, work with KFF’s founding President and CEO, Dr. Drew Altman, to oversee the organization.

Prior to joining KFF, Levitt served as a senior health policy adviser to the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services, working on the development of the Clinton Administration’s Health Security Act and other health policy initiatives. Earlier, he was the special assistant for health policy with California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, a medical economist with Kaiser Permanente, and served in a number of positions in Massachusetts state government. Levitt holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Source: https://www.kff.org/person/larry-levitt/

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

For video versions of special episodes, or to see video extras from our audio-only episodes - subscribe to The Other 80's YouTube channel.

We discuss:

• The state's ambitious plan to screen every Medicaid enrollee for health-related social needs
• How their  approach differs from the social care strategies in NC and CA
• The ticking clock: New York's critical three-year window to demonstrate cost savings and improved care outcomes

Amir says he’s hoping negotiating with the Trump administration goes better than last time:

“We will have to negotiate our demonstration or the renewal of our demonstration with the current administration. The waiver does expire in 27. We have to renew it beginning one year prior to its conclusion, which means we will be negotiating with the Trump administration on our waiver. We've done that before, it did not work out well. “

Relevant Links

• Watch Amir’s talk at the 2024 Medicaid Conference 
• Get more background on 1115 waivers 
• Read more information about New York’s 1115 waiver

About Our Guest

Amir Bassiri, MSW (he, him, his) is the Medicaid Director for the New York State Department of Health. Mr. Bassiri joined the Department of Health in 2019 as Chief of Staff to the Medicaid Director and recently served as the Deputy Medicaid Director, overseeing the operation and performance of nine Medicaid Divisions. Collectively, these nine Divisions are comprised of more than 750 State staff, over 500 contracted staff and management of over 300 contracts, including some of the State's largest technology, actuarial and financial audit contracts, along with health plans.

Prior to his work with the Department, Mr. Bassiri worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for Health in the Governor's Office under the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Mr. Bassiri earned his BA in both Economics and Psychology from the University of California, Davis, before earning a Master's in Social Work (MSW) from Columbia University.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

We dive into:

• Why pedestrian deaths are much higher in the US than Canada 
• The successful, but potentially short-lived, NYC experiment with congestion pricing
• How SUVs have replaced sedans as the family vehicle, creating dangers for other drivers and pedestrians
• How Eisenhower’s vision of interstates connecting US cities got turned around

David says it’s time to focus on safety of those outside our vehicles, not just inside:

“We have spent so much time over decades emphasizing the safety of those inside a vehicle that we have… basically enabled the creation of these Goliaths of SUVs and trucks on our roads, where the marginal size provides maybe an incremental marginal safety benefit for occupants, but at an enormous cost to everybody outside of that huge car... We have… recently hit a year high for pedestrian and cyclist deaths in the US… If I were to rewrite Nader's book, like still unsafe at any speed, I would put much more of the focus on the safety of those outside the car as opposed to occupants.”

Relevant Links

Learn more about the MIT Mobility Initiative

Visit David Zipper’s website

Read articles by David Zipper:

In Vox (“Gigantic SUVs are a public health threat. Why don’t we treat them like one?”), Slate (“There is no technology fix for car bloat”) and Fast Company (“Who’s really to blame – and who isn’t – for America’s traffic death epidemic”). 

About Our Guest

David Zipper is a Senior Fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, examining the intersection of transportation policy, technology, and society. With experience in city government, venture capital, and consulting, he advises public agencies and foundations on improving transportation outcomes. A contributing writer for Vox and Bloomberg CityLab, his work focuses on road safety, climate change, and transit strategies. He previously served in leadership roles in Washington D.C. and New York City, and holds degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, and Swarthmore.

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We discuss:

• The huge and mostly unseen toll of unpaid caregiving
• Engage With Grace, the national movement Alex launched to talk about death
• Whether “hospital at home” is a boon or a curse for family caregivers

Alex reminds us to reach out to caregivers in our lives:

“And most importantly, unpaid caregivers are drowning, right? Don't wait for them to ask for help .. Don't say, “How can I help you”? Because they're too tired. Oh, well, just freaking help fill their fridge, mow their lawns, sit with their mom, whatever it takes.”

Relevant Links

Read more about Alex’s venture ARCHANGELS 

See data on caregivers from The COPE Initiative 

Learn more about the movement Alex founded called “Engage With Grace” 

See information on the Care Badge 

About Our Guest

Alexandra Drane is co-founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS, a national movement and a platform that is reframing how caregivers are seen, honored, and supported using a combination of data and stories, through public and private partnerships. She co-founded Eliza Corporation (acquired by HMS Holdings Corp: HMSY), Engage with Grace, and three other companies (all boot-strapped). A serial entrepreneur, she is also a cashier-on-leave for Walmart. She believes communities are the frontline of health, that caregivers are our country’s greatest asset, and that we need to expand the definition of health to include life.  She has one hobby outside of her passion for revolutionizing health care, and her love of family and adventure…car racing.

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We discuss:

• What it takes to design with and for the communities 
• Her work with the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) to drive the development, evaluation, and appropriate use of AI in healthcare
• Lessons Kameron learned being a student leader for the National Medical Association

Kameron reminds us that we cannot just drop new technologies onto care teams:

“We have respect for the change management that is required to bring forward these new technologies and allow our care teams to really merge them into their current day to day practice. It's not about, as we have seen for years with EHRs. It's not about just putting them through some horrible modular training, but about actually bringing them to a level of understanding and being a part of the decision making of how we're adopting this technology, how we're blending it into their day to day, how it's making their job easier.”

Relevant Links

• About Cityblock
• CNBC Disruptor 50: Cityblock CEO breaks down the business of health care
• At Cityblock Health, ‘Everything is Driven by Data’
• Tour for Diversity in Medicine
• Coalition for Health AI (CHAI)

About Our Guest

As the Chief Health Officer at Cityblock Health, I lead the clinical strategy and operations for a rapidly growing company that provides innovative, personalized, and accessible care to individuals and communities with complex health and social needs. I bring over 15 years of experience as a board-certified family physician, a health policy expert, and a mentor to aspiring and practicing health professionals from diverse backgrounds.

My mission is to transform health care delivery and outcomes for underserved populations by leveraging innovative operations, data, technology, and human-centered design. I have co-founded and directed Tour for Diversity in Medicine, a national initiative that educates and inspires future physicians, dentists, and pharmacists of color, and serve as a Health Innovators Fellow at the Aspen Institute, a prestigious program that fosters entrepreneurial and values-driven leadership in health care. I have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the highest honor in the field, and served as a senior executive at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where I oversaw the largest integrated health care network in the country in the Office of Community Care and later served as Chief Medical Officer of the health system. I am passionate about advancing health equity, quality, and innovation, and empowering the next generation of health care leaders.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kameronmatthews/

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Here’s what we covered:

• The government’s role in shaping and regulating the health tech ecosystem
• AI in healthcare: balancing the risks of misuse vs. the risk of “missed uses” 
• Health information sharing: why Micky is optimistic about the future 
• Can technology take the pain out of prior auth?

Micky thinks we are standing on the edge of a transformative era:

“We are just at the beginning of the most exciting decade...health information technology can really start to show… the return on investment for patients. We've done a lot of hard work over the last 10 years…  [With that foundation in place] we have the opportunity to say there's an ROI here for patients.”

Relevant Links

• Blog post on ONC reorganization: ONC’s Next Chapter
• TEFCA overview
• Forbes interview: Where is interoperability headed?
• Healthcare Dive: HHS AI Task Force Takes Shape (March 2024)
• Blog post by Micky: Getting real about information blocking and APIs (October 2024)

About Our Guest

Micky Tripathi is the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and Acting Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he leads the formulation of HHS technology and data strategy and coordinates technology policies, standards, programs, and investments.

Dr. Tripathi has over 20 years of experience across the health IT landscape. Prior to joining the federal government he served as Chief Alliance Officer for Arcadia, a health care data and software company focused on population health management and value-based care, the project manager of the Argonaut Project, an industry collaboration to accelerate the adoption of FHIR, and a board member of HL7, the Sequoia Project, the CommonWell Health Alliance, and the CARIN Alliance.

Dr. Tripathi served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC), a non-profit health IT advisory and clinical data analytics company. He was also the founding President and CEO of the Indiana Health Information Exchange, a statewide HIE partnered with the Regenstrief Institute, an Executive Advisor to investment firm LRVHealth, and a Fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

He holds a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University, and an AB in political science from Vassar College. Prior to receiving his PhD, he was a Presidential Management Fellow and a senior operations research analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in Washington, DC, for which he received the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Medal.

Source: https://www.healthit.gov/leadership/micky-tripathi-phd-mpp

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Paul and I discuss:

• How Blue Shield slashed the cost of arthritis drug Humira, by offering a biosimilar at 25% of the cost
• Why reducing healthcare  costs is critical to averting a national economic crisis
• Whether we need a new national mandate for health data sharing
• Paul’s advice on tackling fear and being a brave leader

Paul says healthcare affordability isn't just a pocketbook issues for patients, it’s also a huge economic issue for the nation:

“The reality is we are facing a huge affordability crisis, a fiscal crisis right now. Even though our economy is running pretty much at or near full employment, we have record fiscal deficits… We cannot keep spending on this program the way that we are. We need to bring the spending down... Even our dysfunctional political system is going to have to deal with that.”

Relevant Links

California’s new data sharing law 

Announcement of new Humira biosimilar 

Investment in nonprodit Civica for lower cost generics

New prior authorization platform with Salesforce

About Our Guest

Paul Markovich is Chief Executive Officer of Blue Shield of California, a nonprofit health plan with $25 billion in annual revenue serving 4.8 million members in the state's commercial, individual, and government markets. Markovich has launched and led numerous initiatives to drive innovation and help reimagine healthcare, including funding support for a statewide provider directory to make it easier for Californians to find physicians and facilities in their plan; supporting development of a statewide health information network for patients’ records, enabling more seamless and holistic care; and investing in a partnership with the California Medical Association to help physicians pilot new care delivery models and leverage technology.

Markovich is a North Dakota native and Rhodes Scholar with a master’s in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University. He is a graduate of Colorado College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Political Economy and played Division I hockey.

Source: https://www.blueshieldca.com/en/home/about-blue-shield/corporate-information/leadership/paul-markovich

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In this episode, Donna and I discuss:

• The new legislation that is breaking up the deadly organ transplant monopoly
• How ignoring the expertise and insights of patients dooms us to slow progress making healthcare safer and better 
• Her advice for young people: “take your shot”

Donna says we all need to start listening more closely to patients with lived experience:

“I often think if you... had many people with great deals of experience and intelligence who were highly motivated to help you achieve your goal. Why would you not want to use them? Why would you not want to partner with them? Why would you work really, really hard to keep them away from solving the problem? And that's how people treat patients and patient advocates.”

Relevant Links

Donna Cryer’s testimony to the Senate Finance Committee on organ transplant system failures (just past the 48:00 mark)

Summary of the new law to break up the organ transplantation monopoly

More about the Global Liver Institute

See more details about the Advanced Advocacy Academy Donna's organization launched

Visit UNOS’ website

About Our Guest

Donna R. Cryer, JD is the Founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Global Liver Institute, the only patient-driven liver health nonprofit operating across the US, EU, and UK. GLI convenes the NASH, Liver Cancer and Pediatric and Rare Liver Disease Councils, as well as the Liver Action Network, collectively more than 200 organizations.

Mrs. Cryer has channeled her personal experience as a patient with inflammatory bowel disease and a 29-year liver transplant recipient into professional advocacy across a career in law, policy, consulting, public relations, clinical trial recruitment, and nonprofit management. 

At GLI, Mrs. Cryer has raised more than $10 million for liver health initiatives. She is a frequent speaker on the topic of patient-centeredness and patient engagement in healthcare transformation and created a unique model for advocacy that mobilizes patients, influences policy, and coalesces clinicians to improve patient outcomes.

Mrs. Cryer serves on the Boards of Directors for the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, Sibley Memorial Hospital/Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI), and the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative. She was the first patient to serve on the ABIM Gastroenterology Specialty Board, was one of the founding members of the AASLD Patient Advisory Committee and is the Community Representative on the AASLD NASH Task Force. She has been named one of the Top Blacks in Healthcare by the Milken Institute at GW School of Public Health and BlackDoctors.org, one of the Top 10 Patients Who Make An Impact by Health 2.0 and one of PharmaVoice’s 100 Most Inspiring People. Mrs. Cryer received an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a Juris Doctorate from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Source: https://globalliver.org/who-we-are/

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We discuss:

• Her work as a rural doctor with the Indian Health Service 
• Deploying to West Africa in 2014 for the Ebola crisis
• Why the VA and DOD could not agree on electronic health records
• Her commitment to make Pima county one of the healthiest in the nation

Terry reminds us that sometimes we need to step back and look at the work we do through a new lens:

“My husband's an artist, and he challenges me all the time to look at something and look at the light. Look at the composition. Look at where it is. What's the pattern there? You know, and a lot of medicine is based on pattern, but think of a disruptive pattern. Think of a puzzle where the piece doesn't fit and what do you need to do to make that piece fit? Because if it falls into place, maybe the whole thing will heal.”

Relevant Links

Definition of pugilist

Resolve to save lives - 717 alliance

Healthy Pima Indicators 

About Our Guest

Theresa Cullen is currently the Public Health Director of Pima County, Arizona. She has developed a strategic approach to transformational health status change with a goal of health equity through supporting a learning public health system model based on data and action. She continues to work closely with Tribal, federal, state and local partners to ensure that community needs are integrated into planning with a goal of health justice. Dr. Cullen, RADM (retired) USPHS, began her family medicine clinical career with Indian Health Service (IHS) and worked in leadership positions for 25 years with American Indian/Alaska Native communities with a goal of improving health status through innovation and data informatics. Dr. Cullen worked as the Chief Medical Information Officer for the Veterans Health Administration from 2012-2015 and Associate Director of Global Health Informatics at the Regenstrief Institute. She has been honored with multiple local, state and national awards including the USPHS Distinguished Service Medal, the University of Arizona Medical College Alumni Award, and the AMIA Don Detmer Award for informatics health policy contributions.

Source: https://academyhealth.org/about/people/theresa-cullen-md-ms

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We discuss:

• Why the ACA is no longer a political battlefield
• The shifting dynamics of abortion as a single-issue vote
• Why medical debt and drug prices are key affordability issues to watch
• Whether we could see bipartisan progress on AI governance, long term care or PBM reform over the next four years

Larry reminds us that health IS an economic issue:

“People think of the economy and health care being separate issues, but they're In fact, not separate issues at all. I mean, we spend an enormous amount on health care. A lot of people's household budgets go to health care. So, you know, when you talk about an economic issue, health is an economic issue, issue for people.”

Relevant Links

KFF panel: What the 2024 election could mean for health coverage, affordability and the budget

KFF election 2024 page

How medical debt is the canary in the coal mine for health affordability [article]

Project 2025

Abortion-related state ballot measures

About Our Guest

Larry Levitt is the executive vice president for health policy, overseeing KFF’s policy work on Medicare, Medicaid, the health care marketplace, the Affordable Care Act, racial equity, women’s health, and global health. He previously was editor-in-chief of kaisernetwork.org, which was KFF’s online health policy news and information service and directed KFF’s communications. 

Prior to joining KFF, Levitt served as a senior health policy adviser to the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services, working on the development of the Clinton Administration’s Health Security Act and other health policy initiatives. Earlier, he was the special assistant for health policy with California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, a medical economist with Kaiser Permanente, and served in a number of positions in the Massachusetts state government.

Levitt holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Source: https://www.kff.org/person/larry-levitt/ 

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We discuss:

• What Paul Farmer taught him about rejecting a scarcity mindset and reaching for bold goals
• The three cross-cutting challenges addressed in the Healthy NYC agenda: access to primary care, mental health and climate change
• Why NY issued a public health advisory on teen social media use and is suing Meta, Tik Tok YouTube and SnapChat

Ashwin shares why youth social media use is such a major public health priority:

“ Our kids are hurting … Fifty percent of teens are saying that they are either moderately or severely depressed …It's hard to ignore the role that digital media and social media is playing … And what we found was pretty troubling …The more time you're spending on social media, the worse your self -reported mental health is. Whether it's symptoms of depression, anxiety, hopelessness, fear for the future.”

Relevant Links

Article: “Using Law to Advance Population Health Management”

The City of New York’s Advisory on Social Media

More information on Healthy NYC

Viral Video of “Dancing Guy”

About Our Guest

Dr. Ashwin Vasan is the 44th Health Commissioner of New York City. He is a practicing primary care physician, epidemiologist and public health expert with nearly 20 years of experience working to improve physical and mental health, social welfare and public policy outcomes for marginalized populations in New York City, nationally and globally. Throughout his career, he has brought in a unique, unparalleled focus to combating the mental health crisis, releasing a comprehensive citywide mental health plan addressing the second pandemic – a crisis of mental health plaguing youth, vulnerable New Yorkers with severe mental illness, and those impacted by the overdose epidemic. Having begun his career in global health working at Partners in Health and the HIV Department of the World Health Organization, he most recently served as the President and CEO of Fountain House, a US-based mental health nonprofit. He currently serves as faculty at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

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We discuss:

• What it means to be a great public health communicator
• How public health approaches were used to dramatically reduce automobile deaths over the last 50 years, and how the same strategies should be used now to tackle firearm deaths
• Her take on bridging the gap between medical care and public health

Megan says this is the moment for public health reinvention:

“This is a moment where we get to reinvent how we study, teach, and most of all, practice public health, not just locally, but also globally, as we come out of the COVID pandemic, and I think there's a real moral clarity, but also a moral imperative for us, as public health professionals, to seize this moment, to take this kind of pivot point that we're at as a field, and to move it forward in a direction that we will be proud of.”

Relevant Links

Megan Ranney testimony on gun violence as a public health issue

Gun violence panel at Aspen Ideas: Health

Surgeon General advisory on firearm violence

Yale Q&A with Dean Megan Ranney

Common health coalition

Bipartisan Safer Communities Act 

UC Berkeley School of Public Health course on urban gun violence prevention

More on Rahimi case

About Our Guest

Dr. Megan L. Ranney is an emergency physician, researcher, and national advocate for innovative approaches to public health. In July 2023, she joined Yale University as Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, where she is also the C.-E. A. Winslow Professor of Public Health. Her research focuses on developing, testing, and disseminating digital health interventions to prevent violence and related behavioral health problems, and on COVID-related risk reduction. She has held multiple national leadership roles, including as co-founder of GetUsPPE during the COVID-19 pandemic and Senior Strategic Advisor to AFFIRM at the Aspen Institute, focused on ending gun violence through a non-partisan public health approach. She was previously the Warren Alpert Endowed Professor of Emergency Medicine, Deputy Dean of the School of Public Health, and Founding Director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health at Brown University. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Fellow of the Aspen Health Innovators’ Fellowship, and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She earned her bachelor's degree in history of science, graduating summa cum laude, from Harvard University; her medical doctorate, graduating Alpha Omega Alpha, from Columbia University; and her master’s degree in public health from Brown University. She completed her residency in Emergency Medicine and a fellowship in Injury Prevention Research at Brown University.

Source: https://ysph.yale.edu/profile/megan-ranney/

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We discuss:

• The two obvious megatrends hitting healthcare: GLP1s and AI
• And the not so obvious opportunity: doing basic things better
• How Dobbs was an accelerant, not a deterrent, for investments in women’s health
• Why Public Health is great training for healthcare founders

Deena is excited about “asset light” investments that combine new care models – like community health workers – and technology:

“There are some things that won't change. And there are things that hopefully tech can help to navigate. And so these asset light models, these models that are leveraging under leveraged care workers – like community health workers that are providing culturally competent care – and at the end of the day, that are improving metrics and outcomes, are the ones that get me excited.”

Relevant Links

Lux Capital

Jonathan Haidt article in The Atlantic titled “Why the past 10 years of American Life have been uniquely stupid”

President Obama’s Cairo speech

ARPA-H Sprint for Women’s Health

Health companies Deena mentions that she invests in:

Waymark

Summer health

Maven Clinic 

About Our Guest

Deena's investments span stages and sectors, and include women's health, digital health infrastructure, health equity, foodtech, and fintech. Above all, she seeks out extraordinary, often underdog, founders on a mission. Prior to Lux, Deena was a Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), led product partnerships at Google for health, search, and AI/ML, and directed social impact investments at Google.org. Deena also served as a Presidential Management Fellow at The U.S. Department of State under Secretary Clinton, where she helped launch President Obama’s first Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

Deena is a frequent speaker and commentator and has been featured in print and television on Bloomberg, CNBC and NBC, in print in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Techcrunch, Marie Claire, STAT, and more, and has delivered keynote addresses at major industry conferences. She was named a "Top 30 Under 40 in Healthcare" by Business Insider and "Top Senior Woman to Watch in Venture Capital" by the Wall Street Journal in 2021, "Top 50 in Digital Health" by Rock Health and 40 Under 40 by Fortune Magazine in 2022.

Source: https://www.luxcapital.com/people/deena-shakir

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We discuss:

• Why ARPA-H is personal for President Biden.
• How ARPA-H’s special authorities – from flexible hiring to novel contracting – are its secret weapons for speed and scale.
• The critical role of Program Managers – single decision maker driving the vision and execution of each $50-$200 million initiative.

Renee says ARPA-H gives her the ability to direct funds into areas that are sometimes left off the list of “must haves” for innovation:

“...one of the only top down things I've done as a director is said, ‘Why aren't we funding more in women's health? We don't have any program managers in the pipeline that want to exclusively focus on this’. But I think we all inherently understand that women are underrepresented in almost every aspect of health. So I asked our [Program Managers].. who wants to raise [a] hand and pick a topic that is really either unique to women, or is disproportionately affecting women that we can do a sprint and invest around. And so I got six Program Managers to come up with topics, everything from Women's Health at home, to brain health, to understanding and quantifying pain – and through the Investor Catalyst Hub we have worked with investors to understand what kind of convincing scale do we need to get to for you to be the second investor. And we competed this across the country.”

Relevant Links

• About ARPA-H
• ARPA-H Health Equity Factsheet 
• The Minor Consult Podcast Episode
• ARPA - H Timeline
• Youtube Conversation with New Yorker writer
• White House FAQ Sheet on ARPA-H

About Our Guest

Dr. Renee Wegrzyn is the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), appointed by President Biden on October 11, 2022. Previously, she was the Vice President of Business Development at Ginkgo Bioworks and Head of Innovation at Concentric by Ginkgo, where she focused on synthetic biology for combating infectious diseases like COVID-19.

Wegrzyn has experience with DARPA and IARPA, the models for ARPA-H. At DARPA, she used synthetic biology and gene editing to enhance biosecurity and the bioeconomy, managing programs like Living Foundries, Safe Genes, PREPARE, and DIGET. She received the Superior Public Service Medal for her DARPA work. Her career includes leading biosecurity and gene therapy teams in private industry, developing immunoassays and diagnostics. Wegrzyn has served on various scientific advisory boards, including those for the National Academies and the Air Force Research Labs. She holds a Ph.D. and a bachelor's degree in applied biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology and completed postdoctoral training in Heidelberg, Germany, as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow.

Source: https://arpa-h.gov/about/people/renee-wegrzyn#:~:text=Dr.,Biden.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• Biden’s proposed budget, which includes guaranteed vouchers for every low income veteran and person aging out of foster care
• The new frontier; pairing emergency response such as shelters with robust prevention strategies
• How prevention starts with helping families through periods of financial crisis
• What happens when heat crises turn deadly for people who are homeless

Jeff reminds us that the people affected most by the affordable housing crisis are those who have experienced trauma and domestic violence:

“50 years ago, we still had domestic violence, we still had addiction, we still had mental illness, and we didn't have perfect systems to address that – but we had enough housing for everybody, and we did not see homelessness on the scale we see it today. So when we're responding to homelessness, it's critical to individualize support for people to make sure they have access to the care they need in terms of health and mental health and recovery and all of those important things. But if we don't solve the underlying structural stuff, the lack of affordable housing, the ongoing discrimination that people of color and LGBTQ people face in jobs and trying to buy a home or rent a home in the criminal legal system, in education, if we don't solve that underlying stuff, we're gonna keep seeing homelessness for a very long time to come.”

Relevant Links

Jeff Olivet testimony to Congress on strategies to reduce Veteran homelessness

Federal actions to increase housing supply and lower housing costs 

HUD-VASH vouchers to support homeless veterans 

USICH guidance document for healthcare

Article about the SCOTUS ruling 

About Our Guest

Jeff Olivet is the executive director of USICH. He has worked to prevent and end homelessness for more than 25 years as a street outreach worker, case manager, coalition builder, researcher, and trainer. He is the founder of jo consulting, co-founder of Racial Equity Partners, and from 2010 to 2018, he served as CEO of C4 Innovations. He has worked extensively in the areas of homelessness and housing, health and behavioral health, HIV, education, and organizational development. Jeff has been principal investigator on multiple research studies funded by private foundations and the National Institutes of Health. Jeff is deeply committed to social justice, racial equity, gender equality, and inclusion for all. He has a bachelor's from the University of Alabama and a master's from Boston College.

Source: https://www.usich.gov/about/staff

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• Two proven strategies to reduce healthcare costs: advanced primary care and effective specialty referrals
• Why better consumer “shopping” is not the path to healthcare affordability 
• How price transparency gives employers new tools to negotiate, and reveals troubling facts about purchasing intermediaries

Elizabeth reminds us how troubling it is that we don’t have clear prices in a sector that makes up 20% of the economy:

“The idea that you can't find out what something is going to cost before you agree to it is outrageous. Name any other industry that refuses to show you a price. It is incredible to me that we are still fighting about transparency when it is 20 % of the US economy. I mean, this is a multi-trillion-dollar industry who feels no accountability to show pricing. So, I just think it is incredible that we do not have meaningful transparency yet.”

Relevant Links

California’s Office of Health Care Affordability sets cost growth target

Federal hospital price transparency requirements

Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH) website

PBGH white paper on advanced primary care

US Department of Labor clarifies the fiduciary responsibilities of self-insured employers purchasing healthcare

About Our Guest

As President and CEO, Elizabeth Mitchell advances Purchaser Business Group on Health’s (PBGH’s) strategic focus areas of advanced primary care, functional markets and purchasing value. Mitchell leads PBGH in mobilizing health care purchasers, elevating the role and impact of primary care, and creating functional health care markets to support high-quality affordable care, achieving measurable impacts on outcomes and affordability.

At PBGH, Elizabeth leverages her extensive experience in working with health care purchasers, providers, policymakers and payers to improve health care quality and cost. She previously served as Senior Vice President for Healthcare and Community Health Transformation at Blue Shield of California, during which time she designed Blue Shield’s strategy for transforming practice, payment and community health. Mitchell also served as the President and CEO of the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI), a network of regional quality improvement and measurement organizations. She also served as CEO of Maine’s business coalition on health (the Maine Health Management Coalition), worked within an integrated delivery system (MaineHealth), and was elected to the Maine State Legislature, serving as a State Representative.

Elizabeth served as Vice Chairperson of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee, Board and Executive Committee Member of the National Quality Forum (NQF), Member of the National Academy of Medicine’s “Vital Signs” Study Committee on core metrics and a Guiding Committee Member for the Health Care Payment Learning & Action Network. Elizabeth holds a degree in religion from Reed College and studied social policy at the London School of Economics.

Source: https://www.pbgh.org/staff/elizabeth-mitchell/

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• Which community supports are used most, or least? 
• One of the big learnings from CalAIM: the enhanced care management models that work for adults dont work for children
• How Medi-Cal is leveraging health plans as the organizers of social care because that’s where the members are
• The soon-to-be-released population health management service will address two big issues: standardized and equitable approaches to identifying high risk members and integrating state level benefits data, like for WIC 

Palav reminds us that CalAIM was built through listening:

“Not everyone may know this, but CalAIM was generated from a statewide listening tour. Our previous state Medicaid director went around the state and literally asked communities… rooms full of plans, members, providers, what do you need from Medi-Cal that isn't working today? [The]  smorgasbord of recommendations is what turned into CalAIM … Listening to the community and responding to the community's needs is in the core DNA of this program.”

Relevant Links

• Listen to our related episode “Reflecting on Year One of CalAIM with Jacey Cooper”
• CalAIM dashboard
• Population health management policy guide
• California and other states require managed care plans to reinvest in local communities
• NY waiver summary

About Our Guest

Dr. Palav Babaria was appointed Chief Quality Officer and Deputy Director of Quality and Population Health Management of the California Department of Health Care Services beginning in March 2021. She was formerly the Chief Administrative Officer of Ambulatory Services at Alameda Health System. In that capacity, she operationally and clinically oversaw 26 specialty clinics, four large primary care FQHCs, specialty and integrated behavioral health, and is responsible for all outpatient value-based payment programs. Prior to that role, she served as Medical Director of K6 Adult Medicine Clinic. She also has over a decade of global health experience and her work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Academic Medicine, Social Science & Medicine, L.A. Times, and New York Times. Her areas of interest include ambulatory transformation in resource-limited settings, shifting to value-based care, and issues of gender in medicine. Babaria received her bachelor’s from Harvard College, as well as her MD and Masters in Health Science from Yale University. She completed her residency training in internal medicine and global health fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco

Source: https://carolemmottfoundation.org/fellow/palav-babaria-md-mhs/

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• Why he created HealthBegins, which is now halfway to its goal of transforming equity in 250 communities by 2025
• How California is making practice transformation a foundation of whole person care
• Rx the Vote and the important role of health organizations in voter engagement
• Kaiser Permanente's health, housing and justice initiative

Rishi thinks all public health students should study and know how to shift the political determinants of health:

“I think we can recognize there's ways to… get the dollars out the door, get the services out the door, get the access that we need while [also building] local governance. And I think that's what I see as a really interesting opportunity for us in California… There are opportunities here for public health schools, including Berkeley, to [help] public health students… understand the political determinants of health and then understand their role [to]... address them and improve them.”

Relevant Links

HealthBegins website

Rishi’s book The Upstream Doctors

Rishi's TEDx Talk: "What Makes Us Get Sick? Look Upstream."

New collaborative community health planning model in California

Policy requiring California Medicaid health plans to invest 5-7.5% of profits into local communities 

California Medicaid investments in practice transformation

Kaiser Permanente's health, housing and justice initiative

Oregon CCO model

An interview with Rishi Manchanda

About Our Guest

Dr. Manchanda is Founder and President of HealthBegins, a social enterprise that provides training, clinic redesign, and technology to transform health care and the social determinants of health. Dr. Manchanda is a dual board-certified internist and pediatrician, a board member of the National Physicians Alliance, and a fellow in the California Health Care Foundation’s Healthcare Leadership Program. He is the lead physician for homeless primary care at the VA in Los Angeles, where he has built clinics for high-utilizer homeless veterans with complex chronic disease. Dr. Manchanda was the first Director of Social Medicine and Health Equity at a large community health center network in south Los Angeles. In 2008, he started RxDemocracy, a nonpartisan coalition that has registered over 30,000 voters in doctors’ offices and hospitals nationwide. His 2013 book, “The Upstream Doctors,” introduces a new model of the health care workforce that includes clinical “Upstreamists” who address social determinants of health.

Source: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/staff/rishi-manchanda

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

With projects spanning from developing HIV prevention strategies in East Africa to shaping new Medicaid models in California, the UC Berkeley epidemiologist is building a future where local public health leaders have the tools and data to ask and answer complex policy decisions in real time. Now that’s a world I want to live in.

We discuss:

• How much better our pandemic response would have been if Public Health had access to integrated and linked data
• Her work to bring sophisticated data tools to the point of decision in East Africa
• How California is building population management infrastructure

San Francisco’s Director of Health, Grant Colfax, taught her an important lesson about showing up and helping:

“I remember… saying, ‘You know what? You really need to find somebody who's an expert in this, I'm not an expert in this.’ And he said, ‘Okay, Maya, but if you're gonna find me someone it needs to be in the next 24 hours, because I need help.’ And it was just a reminder that, you know, you're not always going to be an expert, sometimes you just need to show up, do your best… be clear about your uncertainty and communicate well, and that can be… a big service”

Relevant Links

Local Epidemic Modeling for the San Francisco Department of Public Health

San Francisco’s COVID strategy

Multi-sectorial Approach to HIV in East Africa

Maya Petersen Day in San Francisco

Maya’s UC Berkeley page

About Our Guest

Dr. Maya L. Petersen is Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Petersen’s methodological research focuses on the development and application of novel causal inference methods to problems in health, with an emphasis on longitudinal data and adaptive treatment strategies (dynamic regimes), machine learning methods, adaptive designs, and study design and analytic strategies for cluster randomized trials. She is a Founding Editor of the Journal of Causal Inference and serves on the editorial board of Epidemiology. Her applied work focuses on developing and evaluating improved HIV prevention and care strategies. She currently serves as co-PI (with Dr. Diane Havlir and Dr. Moses Kamya) for the Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health consortium, and as co-PI (with Dr. Elvin Geng) for the ADAPT-R study (a sequential multiple assignment randomized trial of behavioral interventions to optimize retention in HIV care).

Source: https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/people/maya-petersen

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• How to get stuff done in a politically divided state
• One move that would dramatically increase access to healthy food in America - automatically enroll all Medicaid beneficiaries in SNAP 
• Why NC Medicaid has gone deep on peer to peer support for prenatal care and mental health
• The importance of building a better narrative about the role and value of public health

Kody points out NC’s strategy of investing in community organizations is creating  both health and economic opportunities:

“75% of our community based organizations are minority or women owned throughout those 33 counties. So, this isn't just about getting good access to what drives health in the long run. This is also about building that infrastructure and having a financing model that sustains it that is in the balance, a good value for the taxpayer.”

Relevant Links

NC enrollment dashboard

Crisis warmline

Healthy Opportunities pilots

“NC Launches Additional Phone Support for People Experiencing Mental Illness or Substance Use Disorfer” [RELEASE]

About Our Guest

Kody Kinsley serves as North Carolina’s Secretary of Health & Human Services, overseeing a department with over 18,000 staff and a $38 billion budget. With experience centered on health policy and operations, Kinsley worked on digital healthcare transformation, national education and labor policies, and served as COO and CFO of the U.S. Treasury. 

Secretary Kinsley’s three priorities for the department include: Investing in behavioral health and resilience, improving child and family well-being, and building a strong and inclusive workforce. Under his leadership, North Carolina expanded Medicaid and received the largest investment to bolster the mental health system in over a decade. Kinsley grew up in Wilmington, earning his bachelor’s degree from Brevard College and his master’s in Public Policy from the University of California at Berkeley. 

Source: https://www.ncdhhs.gov/about/leadership/kody-kinsley

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• How we might have avoided the politicization of COVID 
• Partnering with Alaska’s tribes to get vaccines to every corner of the state
• The ways her background as a fine art major, mountaineer and emergency medicine doctor shapes her leadership approach

Anne is committed to breaking the silos between medical care and public health: 

“Public health is population health and if you want to make a difference  … public health and health care have to be braided together. We need to not think about this in terms of separate systems, but we need to think in terms of patients and to get there, public health is that key chief strategist for population health and needs to be at the table.”

Relevant Links

NPR Story on #ThinkLikeZink

Article on the Five Reasons Dr. Zink is crushing it as a crisis communicator

An interview with Alaska’s top doctor

Article on the rural Alaskan towns leading the country in vaccination

Case study on the partnership between public health and tribes for vaccine distribution in Alaska

Information on the Watson Fellowship

About Our Guest

Anne Zink grew up in Colorado and moved through her training from College in Philadelphia to Medical School at Stanford and then Residency at the University of Utah. As a mountaineering guide she had fallen in love with Alaska and after residency in Emergency Medicine became lucky enough to call Alaska home. Not only does she love the people and the place, but also the medicine. She quickly became involved in helping improve systems of care as the medical director of her group, then in her hospital and with state and federal legislation, including state legislation to improve care coordination, opioid addiction treatment options, and integration between private systems and the VA, DOD, and IHS facilities and more.

Dr. Zink became Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer in July 2019. In all the work she does, she strives to create work environments, policies and practices that are data-driven, foster collaboration and build system efficiencies that put patients first. Zink was a visible public presence in the early months of the pandemic, providing medical information and guidance during frequent news conferences held by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and state health officials.

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• How patients – like those first affected by long COVID - accelerate solutions by making invisible problems visible 
• That data liberation is often the foundation for patient rebel movements
• The pop up peer groups forming in Amazon reviews
• A framework for understanding, and embracing patient expertise: seekers, networkers, solvers and champions

Susannah reminds all innovators to talk with people living with rare and life-changing diagnoses:

“If you are going to try to understand the intersection of healthcare and technology, you need to put down your clipboard – which is the classic status symbol of a survey researcher – and get out there and just talk to people. Talk to people especially who are dealing with rare and life-changing diagnoses, because those are the people who are going to use technology in ways that we can't even imagine.”

Relevant Links

Susannah’s book Rebel Health

Susannah’s blog: Wow! How? Health

Patient-Led Research Scorecards

An article about how patient-led research could speed up medical innovation

A story about Tidepool Loop receiving FDA clearance

OpenAPS and #WeAreNotWaiting

Hugo Campos’s TedX talk about not being able to access his cardiac device data

Graphic used by Sarah Riggare to show the time spent in self-care for Parkinson’s disease

About Our Guest

Susannah Fox is a health and technology strategist. Her book, Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care, was recently published by MIT Press. She is a former Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama Administration, where she led an open data and innovation lab. Prior to federal service, she was the entrepreneur-in-residence at the  Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. For 14 years she directed the health portfolio at the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project where she helped define a new market at the intersection of health, social media, and patient engagement.  Fox currently serves on the board of directors of Cambia Health Solutions of Portland, OR, and Hive Networks of Cincinnati, OH. She is an advisor to Alladapt Immunotherapeutics, Archangels, Article 27, Atlas of Caregiving, Before Brands, Citizen, Equip Health, Faster Cures, and the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at Smithsonian Institution. Fox is a graduate of Wesleyan University with a degree in anthropology. She is the mother of two children, a caregiver for elders, and lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, Eric Halperin.

Source: https://susannahfox.com/bio/

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• That public health’s deepest power lies in the ability to help diverse groups reach consensus under great uncertainty
• How California redeployed an army of census workers to support the COVID response
• The biggest opportunities to use AI for public health
• Three great book recommendations: “How Emotions Are Made” by Lisa Feldman Barrett, “High Conflict” by Amanda Ripley and “Fifth Discipline” by Peter M. Senge

Dr. Aragón shared insights about leadership: 

“The other thing is to really appreciate the importance of human psychology. It is so incredibly important … You're going to come up against people who are going to “resist”. I don't think of it as resistance. I just think they're being human. That's just all it is. People have variability in how they process information … And so rather than seeing things as resistance, you really just see it as part of the diversity of ingenuity that exists in an organizational culture.” 

Relevant Links

Dr. Tomás Aragón’s UC Berkeley Public Health profile

Dr. Tomás Aragón’s GitHub blog

Article on Bay Area pandemic response: The epidemiology and surveillance response to pandemic influenza A (H1N1) among local health departments in the San Francisco Bay Area

“How Emotions Are Made” by Lisa Feldman Barrett

“High Conflict” by Amanda Ripley 

“Fifth Discipline” by Peter M. Senge

About Our Guest

Dr. Tomás Aragón, MD, DrPH, has served as the director of the California Department of Public Health and the State Public Health Officer, since January 4, 2021. Prior to coming to CDPH, he was the health officer for the City and County of San Francisco and director of the public health division. Dr. Aragón has served in public health leadership roles for more than 20 years (communicable disease controller, deputy health officer, health officer, community health and chronic disease epidemiologist), including directing a public health emergency preparedness and response research and training center at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

In 2023, TIME named Dr. Ziad Obermeyer one of the 100 most influential people working in AI. As a professor at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, and the co-founder of a non-profit and a startup in the AI healthcare space, his work centers on how to leverage AI to improve health and avoid racial bias.

We discuss:

• The idea of a safe harbor for companies to discuss and resolve AI challenges
• How his company Dandelion Health is helping solve the data log jam for AI product testing
• Why academics need to spend time “on the shop floor”
• The simple framework for avoiding AI bias he shared in his recent testimony to the Senate Finance Committee

Ziad says without access to the right data, AI systems can’t offer equitable solutions: 

“I think data is the biggest bottleneck to these things, and that bottleneck is even more binding in less well-resourced hospitals… When we look around and we see, ‘well, there are all these health algorithms that are in medical journals and people are publishing about them’. The majority of those things come from Palo Alto, Rochester, Minnesota [and] Boston. And, those patients are wonderful and they deserve to have algorithms trained on them and learning about them, but they are not representative of the rest of the country – let alone the rest of the world. And so, we have these huge disparities in the data from which algorithms are learning. And then those mirror the disparities and where algorithms can be applied.”

Relevant Links

Dr. Obermeyer’s profile at UC Berkeley School of Public Health

Ziad Obermeyer’s testimony to the Senate Finance Committee on how AI can help healthcare

More about Nightingale Open Science

More about Dandelion Health

Article on dissecting racial bias in algorithms

Article On the Inequity of Predicting A While Hoping for B. AER: P&P 2021 (with Sendhil Mullainathan)

About Our Guest

Dr. Ziad Obermeyer is the Blue Cross of California Distinguished Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at UC Berkeley School of Public Health. His research uses machine learning to help doctors make better decisions, and help researchers make new discoveries—by ‘seeing’ the world the way algorithms do. His work on algorithmic racial bias has impacted how many organizations build and use algorithms, and how lawmakers and regulators hold AI accountable. He is a cofounder of Nightingale Open Science and Dandelion Health, a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in AI by TIME. Previously, he was Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, and he continues to practice emergency medicine in underserved communities.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

Dr. Monica McLemore, a Professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing, says we should stop blaming women for their own deaths and instead address the underlying social and healthcare drivers that impact pregnancy outcomes. In other words, we need to focus on the other 80.

We discuss:

• The Momnibus, a comprehensive legislative package to improve maternal health in the US which has still not been passed into law
• How disruptive periods, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Dobbs, provide opportunities to re-imagine maternal and child health in the US
• Why community-centered research is essential for improving health equity

Monica says we need to change our views on scientific evidence: 

“There is no way we're going to get … changes in health outcomes at a population level if you don't bring the social and the clinical together, it's just not happening. And so that requires a change in mindset of the scientific community about what is evidence, who generates evidence, who can contribute to evidence, what evidence is needed and what methods are we going to use to obtain said evidence? Because community is over extraction. They are over participating in studies and not getting anything back. They are over funding science as taxpayers and not being able to access it.”

Relevant Links

CDC’s Report on Maternal Mortality 

JAMA Articles on trends in maternal mortality:

• https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/audio-player/18796651
• https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2806661?utm_source=podcast_platforms&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=related_article_links

Summary of JAMA webinar on maternal mortality

Op-Ed: How We Can Reimagine Black Maternal Health in the Changed Landscape of Dobbs

Centering the health of mothers

To Prevent Women from Dying in Childbirth First Stop Blaming Them

About Our Guest

Monica McLemore is a preeminent scholar of antiracist birth equity research, community-informed methods, and policy translation. Dr. McLemore is a Professor in the Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing at the University of Washington School of Nursing. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Nursing from The College of New Jersey in 1993 after declaring at eight years old that she would become a nurse. She has a Master’s in Public Health from San Francisco State University and a PhD in Oncology Genomics at the University of California, San Francisco. She’s worked her entire career in reproductive health, rights, and justice. Monica retired from active clinical practice after a 28-year career and was awarded tenure in 2019. Monica’s  research findings have been widely cited and her writings work synergistically to allow her thoughts, ideas, and strategies to design and test interventions to advance reproductive justice for all.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• A powerful partnership with the Children’s Law Center
• The path to value-based payment for community organizations
• The future of public health education: providing the system, structure and culture that encourages every student to be a catalyst for positive change
• How DC is starting to address decades of under-investment in Wards 7 and 8 through its equity budget review

Karen discusses the just cause for a school of public health in today’s world: 

“It would be to create … a system, structure and culture that infuses what every student needs to be a catalyst for positive change for human beings … [A] school that creates that culture, gives people the tools, gives them the encouragement, gives them the freedom to try and fail, but learn and apply – that would be amazing. Because … we need a whole generation of people who are in the fight.”

Relevant Links

Karen’s commencement address to George Mason grads

NPR piece on partnership with Children’s Law Center

New payment approaches for EPSDT

Guidance for Health Care Entities Partnering with Community-Based Organizations: Addressing Health-Related Social Needs in Alternative Payment Models. [hcp-lan.org]

About Our Guest

Karen M. Dale is Market President for AmeriHealth Caritas District of Columbia, a mission-based Medicaid Managed Care Organization in Washington, D.C., and the Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer for the AmeriHealth Caritas Family of Companies. Her focus includes applying a health equity lens to impact all levels of policies, processes, decisions, laws, and outcomes for the communities AmeriHealth Caritas serves.

She also leads a decidedly metric-driven business approach to mobilize leaders and accelerate strategies to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion inside and outside the walls of AmeriHealth Caritas. As a result, opportunities for people to experience health, wholeness, and belonging are enhanced by addressing the social, economic, and environmental conditions that are drivers of poor health.

Her hobbies include gardening, creating healthy Caribbean recipes, traveling, and watching her son’s soccer games.

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• Why we should never use the term “value-based care” ever again.
• Braidwood vs. Becerra: The court case that may eliminate free preventive services for half of all Americans.
• The double whammy of US healthcare: system failures and personal shame.
• How to nurture listening and belonging on a team.

Natalie says before you start listening, you need to consider who is being failed by the healthcare system and prioritize hearing their stories:

“If we look at something like maternal health – which is a work that we're doing right now – if you look at the data, it is women of color, especially Black women who are left behind and facing a real failure of our system, which is causing morbidity and mortality. And so, for our organization, we are listening loudly to Black women and we are talking to people in communit[ies], we are talking in focus groups to really make sure we understand those issues. Because, if the people who are not served by this healthcare system are listened to and then served it will make the healthcare system function better for all of us.”

Relevant Links

United States of Care's website

United Solutions for Care

Patient-First Care (a.k.a. Value-Based Care) Messaging Findings

United States of Care Preventive Services Resource Hub

Insight Report from November 2023

The amicus brief United States of Care submitted on Braidwood vs. Becerra

About Our Guest

Natalie Davis has worked for nearly two decades shaping and implementing American health care policies to improve the lives of all people. In 2018, she and fellow national health care leader Andy Slavitt launched United States of Care to ensure that everyone in the country has access to quality, affordable health care regardless of health status, social need, or income. She is relentless in her person-centered approach to building health care solutions and has a history of building partnerships – with organizations, patient advocacy groups and everyday people – that work to create positive change in our country’s health care system. From 2010-2016, Natalie served at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, with the final two years as Senior Advisor to former CMS Administrator, Andy Slavitt. In 2017, Natalie served as the Director of Strategic Engagement at the Bipartisan Policy Center. A social entrepreneur, Natalie also helped found Town Hall Ventures and The Medicaid Transformation Project, both of which focus on bringing the best of innovation and care delivery to diverse communities. An advocate and a mother, Natalie currently serves on the board of directors of the Preeclampsia Foundation.

Natalie holds an M.A. in Social Policy from George Washington University and is an alumna of Salisbury University schools of Sociology and Art History. Natalie lives in Washington, DC with her amazing husband and four children.

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

We discuss:

• Shocking trends in American health: 48% of Americans are lonely, 35% dont get six hours a night of sleep and 60% of adult calories come from ultra-processed food.
• The mistake of thinking of our daily choices as “individual” decisions, when these decisions are profoundly shaped by our environments and the products we use.
• The Building H Index, which evaluates everyday products against five metrics of health: eating, physical activity, sleep, social connection, and spending time outdoors.
• Culdesac - A real-estate developer that is building “cities for people without cars”.

Steve asks how we could broaden consumer product regulation to focus on broad health impacts, not just safety:

"McDonald's is not responsible for all the food related chronic illnesses in America. But you might argue that they are, I don't know, 1.7%, responsible or 3.8% responsible …  I think we ultimately need to get to a place where if your product is leading to unhealthy behaviors, which is leading to illness and disease and cost, there may need to be some accountability for that." 

Relevant Links

Building H website

Building H Index

AJHP paper on the product environment

Daniel Lieberman’s book on the history of the human body (no affiliate fee taken)

Culdesac website

HBS Impact-weighted accounts

International Foundation for Valuing Impact

ANNOUNCEMENT: Building H is seeking volunteers with a background in public health, healthcare or health policy to help build the Building H Index by rating products and services on their health impacts. If you’re interested in participating in a short scoring exercise, please go to this site for details and sign up https://www.buildingh.org/index/volunteer-signup 

About Our Guest

Steve Downs works at Building H as a co-founder. Prior to his role at Building H, Steve was the chief technology and strategy officer at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) where he led a transformation of the Foundation’s practice of program strategy, putting in place an approach that is highly flexible and adaptive. Over his career at RWJF, Steve held a variety of management roles — including chief technology and information officer, assistant vice president of the health group, and founding leader of the foundation’s innovation portfolio — while also funding and working directly with a broad portfolio of innovators at the intersection of tech and health. Downs is a lecturer at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford University and adjunct faculty at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU.

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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

Summary

Steve Downs discusses his work as CTO and Chief Strategy Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (02:00)

• Claudia Williams and Steve talk about his work at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation where he helped develop their strategy and grantmaking approach around building a “culture of health”..

Trying to be healthy in the modern world is like swimming upstream against strong currents. (05:58)

• Humans, who evolved as hunter-gatherers, are not well-suited for modern and sedentary life, leading to the rapid recent uptick in chronic diseases.
• We highlight the gradual erosion of healthy behaviors (diet, physical activity, sleep, social interaction) in parallel with the rise of chronic conditions.

The Building H Index measures the health impact of everyday products and services. (10:36)

• Steve and a team of experts developed a project – the Building H index – to assess the health impact of everyday products and services, starting with 37 major products and services and expanding to 75 in a new iteration.
• The team aims to use a Health Impact Assessment framework to evaluate the potential health effects of the products and services we use everyday.

Products can have negative (or positive) impact on a surprisingly broad range of health behaviors. (12:40)

• For instance, consuming fast food has a negative impact on nutrition but also on sleep, social interaction, physical activity and time spent outdoors.
• The Building H team aims to get companies to recognize their influence on health behaviors and work towards creating healthier products and experiences.

Laying the groundwork for different approaches to product regulation. (14:08)

• Steve discusses how consumer product regulation could consider the aggregate of product influences, rather than just safety.
• He argues that companies should be held accountable for the externalities of their products on people's health, such as obesity and related illnesses.
• Steve suggests that measuring and internalizing these externalities could lead to different forms of regulation.
• Researchers at Harvard Business School are developing a framework for corporate financial statements that quantify a company's social impact in dollars and cents.

How have companies reacted to the Building H index? (19:55)

• Some companies are eager to engage in conversations about product changes they could make to make them healthier. But that reaction is not universal.
• Some companies are curious, engaged, and want to improve, while others are indifferent or unresponsive.
• Steve highlights the constructive nature of the assessment, which is akin to a free product consultancy with actionable suggestions for product changes that could lead to a more positive impact on health.

Could this lead to voluntary agreements across companies? (23:34)

• Companies could work collaboratively to avoid harmful practices like autoplay in video streaming services.

Culdesac – a company building a car-free community in Arizona – won the top score on the 2022 Building H index. (25:41)

• Culdesac is building a car-free community in Tempe, Arizona, with shared bikes and scooters, lots of social spaces, and a grocery store. Many people want to live in an environment that supports and promotes healthier and more green choices.

Moving beyond a model of behavior change based on individual choice. (27:38)

• We discuss how individual agency and choice is not always a useful way to think about health behaviors given the enormous influence from how the products we use and the environments we live in are designed.
• Steve: "If you tilt the playing field in a certain direction, the balls are gonna roll to one side."
• Steve suggests reimagining entertainment beyond screens and couches, envisioning a future where it's more physical, social, and outdoors.
• Building H is collaborating with the University of Washington's Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering to explore speculative design projects.

How can universities and schools of public health be more impactful in creating the conditions of health in America? (33:30)

• Steve urges schools of public health to jump on this issue of the "product environment" since it is an underexplored topic for research and action. We need more research and measurement around the impact...]]>The modern world, and the products we use everyday, are making us sick. But what if we could shift this trend and start to build health into everyday life? That’s exactly what Steve Downs and Thomas Goetz, co-founders of Building H, are working on. Steve, the former CTO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, joins us to discuss how Building H is helping companies and designers re-engineer products and “product environments” so they improve rather than harm health.  

  We discuss:

  • Shocking trends in American health: 48% of Americans are lonely, 35% dont get six hours a night of sleep and 60% of adult calories come from ultra-processed food.
  • The mistake of thinking of our daily choices as “individual” decisions, when these decisions are profoundly shaped by our environments and the products we use.
  • The Building H Index, which evaluates everyday products against five metrics of health: eating, physical activity, sleep, social connection, and spending time outdoors.
  • Culdesac - A real-estate developer that is building “cities for people without cars”.
  
  

  Steve asks how we could broaden consumer product regulation to focus on broad health impacts, not just safety:

  "McDonald's is not responsible for all the food related chronic illnesses in America. But you might argue that they are, I don't know, 1.7%, responsible or 3.8% responsible …  I think we ultimately need to get to a place where if your product is leading to unhealthy behaviors, which is leading to illness and disease and cost, there may need to be some accountability for that." 

  Relevant Links

  Building H website

  Building H Index

  AJHP paper on the product environment

  Daniel Lieberman’s book on the history of the human body (no affiliate fee taken)

  Culdesac website

  HBS Impact-weighted accounts

  International Foundation for Valuing Impact

  ANNOUNCEMENT: Building H is seeking volunteers with a background in public health, healthcare or health policy to help build the Building H Index by rating products and services on their health impacts. If you’re interested in participating in a short scoring exercise, please go to this site for details and sign up https://www.buildingh.org/index/volunteer-signup 

  About Our Guest

  Steve Downs works at Building H as a co-founder. Prior to his role at Building H, Steve was the chief technology and strategy officer at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) where he led a transformation of the Foundation’s practice of program strategy, putting in place an approach that is highly flexible and adaptive. Over his career at RWJF, Steve held a variety of management roles — including chief technology and information officer, assistant vice president of the health group, and founding leader of the foundation’s innovation portfolio — while also funding and working directly with a broad portfolio of innovators at the intersection of tech and health. Downs is a lecturer at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford University and adjunct faculty at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU.

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  
  

  Summary

  Steve Downs discusses his work as CTO and Chief Strategy Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (02:00)

  • Claudia Williams and Steve talk about his work at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation where he helped develop their strategy and grantmaking approach around building a “culture of health”..
  
  

  Trying to be healthy in the modern world is like swimming upstream against strong currents. (05:58)

  • Humans, who evolved as hunter-gatherers, are not well-suited for modern and sedentary life, leading to the rapid recent uptick in chronic diseases.
  • We highlight the gradual erosion of healthy behaviors (diet, physical activity, sleep, social interaction) in parallel with the rise of chronic conditions.
  
  

  The Building H Index measures the health impact of everyday products and services. (10:36)

  • Steve and a team of experts developed a project – the Building H index – to assess the health impact of everyday products and services, starting with 37 major products and services and expanding to 75 in a new iteration.
  • The team aims to use a Health Impact Assessment framework to evaluate the potential health effects of the products and services we use everyday.
  
  

  Products can have negative (or positive) impact on a surprisingly broad range of health behaviors. (12:40)

  • For instance, consuming fast food has a negative impact on nutrition but also on sleep, social interaction, physical activity and time spent outdoors.
  • The Building H team aims to get companies to recognize their influence on health behaviors and work towards creating healthier products and experiences.
  
  

  Laying the groundwork for different approaches to product regulation. (14:08)

  • Steve discusses how consumer product regulation could consider the aggregate of product influences, rather than just safety.
  • He argues that companies should be held accountable for the externalities of their products on people's health, such as obesity and related illnesses.
  • Steve suggests that measuring and internalizing these externalities could lead to different forms of regulation.
  • Researchers at Harvard Business School are developing a framework for corporate financial statements that quantify a company's social impact in dollars and cents.
  
  

  How have companies reacted to the Building H index? (19:55)

  • Some companies are eager to engage in conversations about product changes they could make to make them healthier. But that reaction is not universal.
  • Some companies are curious, engaged, and want to improve, while others are indifferent or unresponsive.
  • Steve highlights the constructive nature of the assessment, which is akin to a free product consultancy with actionable suggestions for product changes that could lead to a more positive impact on health.
  
  

  Could this lead to voluntary agreements across companies? (23:34)

  • Companies could work collaboratively to avoid harmful practices like autoplay in video streaming services.
  
  

  Culdesac – a company building a car-free community in Arizona – won the top score on the 2022 Building H index. (25:41)

  • Culdesac is building a car-free community in Tempe, Arizona, with shared bikes and scooters, lots of social spaces, and a grocery store. Many people want to live in an environment that supports and promotes healthier and more green choices.
  
  

  Moving beyond a model of behavior change based on individual choice. (27:38)

  • We discuss how individual agency and choice is not always a useful way to think about health behaviors given the enormous influence from how the products we use and the environments we live in are designed.
  • Steve: "If you tilt the playing field in a certain direction, the balls are gonna roll to one side."
  • Steve suggests reimagining entertainment beyond screens and couches, envisioning a future where it's more physical, social, and outdoors.
  • Building H is collaborating with the University of Washington's Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering to explore speculative design projects.
  
  

  How can universities and schools of public health be more impactful in creating the conditions of health in America? (33:30)

  • Steve urges schools of public health to jump on this issue of the "product environment" since it is an underexplored topic for research and action. We need more research and measurement around the impact of product features on health behaviors. We also need more people to do research that is an input for an action, application or policy change that will influence health.
  
  ]]>5cf1b14c-ed36-416b-8e58-a2e6e3406c2fWed, 24 Jan 2024 03:30:00 -040040:18falsefull221212Caring for Rural America with Dr. Jennifer SchneiderRural America is facing a healthcare crisis. Home to 60 million people, rural areas face a 23% higher mortality rate compared to urban locations due to lack of infrastructure, lower socio-economic status and provider shortages. Indeed, rural areas have half as many primary care providers and an eighth as many specialists as urban locales.

  In this episode, Homeward’s CEO, Jennifer Schneider discusses how her company uses remote monitoring, telehealth and a novel staffing model to re-architect care delivery in rural America with the goals of improving access and health outcomes.

  We discuss:

  • Why Jennifer and her co-founder decided to make Homeward a B Corp.
  • How Homeward uses technology and non-physician providers to expand access to care in rural America.
  • Lessons from Homeward’s early rollout in Minnesota.
  
  

  Jennifer says we often underestimate how large the  rural healthcare market is:

  “I jokingly say [to] people when we started Livongo... we initially started in diabetes care. And people said, “That's amazing, it's going to be a huge business. There's 30 million people living with diabetes, so great that you did this nice little niche company for your next company”. And so well, how many people do you think live in a rural health care markets? [I] kind of get a blank stare. And the answer is – double the size [of] the population of people with diabetes… 60 million people live in… [a] rural market.“

  Relevant Links

  Homeward website

  Lack Of Access To Specialists Associated With Mortality And Preventable Hospitalizations Of Rural Medicare Beneficiaries [Article]

  U.S. Government Accountability Office: “ACCESSING HEALTH CARE IN RURAL AMERICA” [PDF]

  Forbes: “Healthcare In Rural America Isn’t A Little Broken, It’s A Lot Broken: A Conversation With Dr. Jennifer Schneider, Founder And CEO, Homeward Health”

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Jennifer Schneider is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Homeward, a company focused on rearchitecting the delivery of health and care in partnership with communities everywhere, starting in rural America. Previously, Dr. Schneider served as the chief medical officer and president of Livongo. She also served as chief medical officer of Castlight Health. Dr. Schneider has been honored by Modern Healthcare as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” and by Fierce Healthcare as a “Woman of Influence” for her work empowering women and modeling diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Dr. Schneider is also on the boards of Maven and Jasper. Dr. Schneider completed her bachelor's degree in biology at the College of the Holy Cross. She went on to get her MD at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and her master’s degree in Health Services Research at Stanford University.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn 

  ]]>Rural America is facing a healthcare crisis. Home to 60 million people, rural areas face a 23% higher mortality rate compared to urban locations due to lack of infrastructure, lower socio-economic status and provider shortages. Indeed, rural areas have half as many primary care providers and an eighth as many specialists as urban locales.

  In this episode, Homeward’s CEO, Jennifer Schneider discusses how her company uses remote monitoring, telehealth and a novel staffing model to re-architect care delivery in rural America with the goals of improving access and health outcomes.

  We discuss:

  • Why Jennifer and her co-founder decided to make Homeward a B Corp.
  • How Homeward uses technology and non-physician providers to expand access to care in rural America.
  • Lessons from Homeward’s early rollout in Minnesota.
  
  

  Jennifer says we often underestimate how large the  rural healthcare market is:

  “I jokingly say [to] people when we started Livongo... we initially started in diabetes care. And people said, “That's amazing, it's going to be a huge business. There's 30 million people living with diabetes, so great that you did this nice little niche company for your next company”. And so well, how many people do you think live in a rural health care markets? [I] kind of get a blank stare. And the answer is – double the size [of] the population of people with diabetes… 60 million people live in… [a] rural market.“

  Relevant Links

  Homeward website

  Lack Of Access To Specialists Associated With Mortality And Preventable Hospitalizations Of Rural Medicare Beneficiaries [Article]

  U.S. Government Accountability Office: “ACCESSING HEALTH CARE IN RURAL AMERICA” [PDF]

  Forbes: “Healthcare In Rural America Isn’t A Little Broken, It’s A Lot Broken: A Conversation With Dr. Jennifer Schneider, Founder And CEO, Homeward Health”

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Jennifer Schneider is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Homeward, a company focused on rearchitecting the delivery of health and care in partnership with communities everywhere, starting in rural America. Previously, Dr. Schneider served as the chief medical officer and president of Livongo. She also served as chief medical officer of Castlight Health. Dr. Schneider has been honored by Modern Healthcare as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” and by Fierce Healthcare as a “Woman of Influence” for her work empowering women and modeling diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Dr. Schneider is also on the boards of Maven and Jasper. Dr. Schneider completed her bachelor's degree in biology at the College of the Holy Cross. She went on to get her MD at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and her master’s degree in Health Services Research at Stanford University.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn 

  ]]>51b70364-6b66-4b2c-910a-5487afdbb524Wed, 10 Jan 2024 03:30:00 -040026:40falsefull220202The Best Kept Secret with Dr. Kyu RheeBefore the phrase “social drivers of health” was commonly used, Community Health Centers had already developed a model of care that was holistic, grounded in social change and embedded in the community. At this year’s HLTH Conference in Las Vegas, I sat down with Dr. Kyu Rhee, the new CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers. Dr. Rhee brings a fresh perspective to NACHC as a clinician and an immigrant with broad experience in policy, clinical practice and technology.

  We discuss:

  • What medicine would look like if every doctor was trained in a community health center, not just in fancy hospitals.
  • How CHCs knock quality metrics out of the park while improving equity.
  • One secret to community embeddedness: Every CHC must name patients to at least half of the governing board seats.
  • The new prescriptions to improve health: food and iPads.
  
  

  Kyu reminds us that changing an entire system can’t happen overnight, we need patience and passion:

  “Earlier in my career as a medical director, I was like, “We got to fix this!” And I think I had to learn that there's so many angles on how you see a problem … so that passion of advocating for health equity and the injustices, you have to be thoughtful about allowing that passion to be part of your purpose, but also being patient in the process.”

  Relevant Links

  Website for the National Association of Community Health Centers

  Economic Impact of Community Health Centre in the United States [PDF]

  America’s Health Centers by the Numbers [PDF]

  "How the Civil Rights Movement Gave Rise to Community Health Centers" [BLOG]

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Kyu (“Q”) Rhee, MD, MPP, joined the National Association of Community Health Centers as CEO in 2023. He leads efforts to advance health equity and support the mission of community health centers, which provide high-quality, affordable, transdisciplinary primary care services to more than 31.5 million people at over 14,000 sites across the nation. He has held leadership roles as the Senior Vice President and Aetna Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health, as the Chief Health Officer at IBM, and as Chief Public Health Officer at the Health Resources and Services Administration. Dr. Rhee has a medical degree from the University of Southern California and a masters degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn 

  ]]>Before the phrase “social drivers of health” was commonly used, Community Health Centers had already developed a model of care that was holistic, grounded in social change and embedded in the community. At this year’s HLTH Conference in Las Vegas, I sat down with Dr. Kyu Rhee, the new CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers. Dr. Rhee brings a fresh perspective to NACHC as a clinician and an immigrant with broad experience in policy, clinical practice and technology.

  We discuss:

  • What medicine would look like if every doctor was trained in a community health center, not just in fancy hospitals.
  • How CHCs knock quality metrics out of the park while improving equity.
  • One secret to community embeddedness: Every CHC must name patients to at least half of the governing board seats.
  • The new prescriptions to improve health: food and iPads.
  
  

  Kyu reminds us that changing an entire system can’t happen overnight, we need patience and passion:

  “Earlier in my career as a medical director, I was like, “We got to fix this!” And I think I had to learn that there's so many angles on how you see a problem … so that passion of advocating for health equity and the injustices, you have to be thoughtful about allowing that passion to be part of your purpose, but also being patient in the process.”

  Relevant Links

  Website for the National Association of Community Health Centers

  Economic Impact of Community Health Centre in the United States [PDF]

  America’s Health Centers by the Numbers [PDF]

  "How the Civil Rights Movement Gave Rise to Community Health Centers" [BLOG]

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Kyu (“Q”) Rhee, MD, MPP, joined the National Association of Community Health Centers as CEO in 2023. He leads efforts to advance health equity and support the mission of community health centers, which provide high-quality, affordable, transdisciplinary primary care services to more than 31.5 million people at over 14,000 sites across the nation. He has held leadership roles as the Senior Vice President and Aetna Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health, as the Chief Health Officer at IBM, and as Chief Public Health Officer at the Health Resources and Services Administration. Dr. Rhee has a medical degree from the University of Southern California and a masters degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn 

  ]]>7a376958-1a46-4f2b-83be-35e965677c73Wed, 13 Dec 2023 04:45:00 -040023:50falsefull219192In Pursuit of Scale with Dr. Shantanu AgrawalIs whole health here to stay, or is it a shiny new object? Our guest today is Dr. Shantanu Agrawal, Chief Health Officer at Elevance Health. He falls soundly on the “here to stay” side of the ledger. He shares that whole health is not a side business for Elevance Health and its 47.5 million members. It is the core strategy for how the company will achieve value and affordability. And it’s also what patients want.

  We dive into:

  • Whether the US could get better outcomes at the same cost by redirecting resources from medical to social care.
  • Why and how Elevance developed its Whole Health Index.
  • The Elevance foundation’s three-part focus: maternal health, food as medicine and substance use disorders.
  • The need for a new quality paradigm that measures whole health, not clinical care for individual body parts.
  
  

  Shantanu calls for a deeper look at US health spending and outcomes compared to other countries:

  “People often make this comparison, ‘well, our health outcomes are generally worse, we spend a lot of money in health care’. However, when you actually look at the total expense on health and social care across all these countries, it actually looks pretty similar. We are more on par with our peers, or they're more on par with us from a cost standpoint. But it is true - our health outcomes are worse. Well, why is that? Well, maybe it's because we've emphasized health care, and not care of a person's health, which means being inclusive of social and being upstream and working earlier in their life. Perhaps if we do this, we will right size the equation for our country.”

  Relevant Links

  More information on Elevance’s Whole Health Index [PDF]

  Health Affairs article on “A Whole Health Population-Based Payment Approach”

  Committing to Whole Health: A Conversation with Felicia Norwood & Dr. Shantanu Agrawal [VIDEO]

  Distinguishing Health Equity and Health Care Equity: A Framework for Measurement 

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Shantanu Agrawal, MD, MPhil is chief health officer at Elevance Health, where he oversees the enterprise whole health strategy, including medical policy and clinical quality, as well as the company’s industry-leading work to address health-related social needs and health equity. Passionate about improving health outcomes and reducing disparities, Agrawal draws on his clinical and business expertise to push for a more equitable health space for the people Elevance Health serves. He also leads Elevance Health’s community health strategy and the Elevance Health Foundation. Previously, Dr. Agrawal served as president and CEO of the National Quality Forum, deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and director of one of its largest centers, the Center for Program Integrity.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>Is whole health here to stay, or is it a shiny new object? Our guest today is Dr. Shantanu Agrawal, Chief Health Officer at Elevance Health. He falls soundly on the “here to stay” side of the ledger. He shares that whole health is not a side business for Elevance Health and its 47.5 million members. It is the core strategy for how the company will achieve value and affordability. And it’s also what patients want.

  We dive into:

  • Whether the US could get better outcomes at the same cost by redirecting resources from medical to social care.
  • Why and how Elevance developed its Whole Health Index.
  • The Elevance foundation’s three-part focus: maternal health, food as medicine and substance use disorders.
  • The need for a new quality paradigm that measures whole health, not clinical care for individual body parts.
  
  

  Shantanu calls for a deeper look at US health spending and outcomes compared to other countries:

  “People often make this comparison, ‘well, our health outcomes are generally worse, we spend a lot of money in health care’. However, when you actually look at the total expense on health and social care across all these countries, it actually looks pretty similar. We are more on par with our peers, or they're more on par with us from a cost standpoint. But it is true - our health outcomes are worse. Well, why is that? Well, maybe it's because we've emphasized health care, and not care of a person's health, which means being inclusive of social and being upstream and working earlier in their life. Perhaps if we do this, we will right size the equation for our country.”

  Relevant Links

  More information on Elevance’s Whole Health Index [PDF]

  Health Affairs article on “A Whole Health Population-Based Payment Approach”

  Committing to Whole Health: A Conversation with Felicia Norwood & Dr. Shantanu Agrawal [VIDEO]

  Distinguishing Health Equity and Health Care Equity: A Framework for Measurement 

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Shantanu Agrawal, MD, MPhil is chief health officer at Elevance Health, where he oversees the enterprise whole health strategy, including medical policy and clinical quality, as well as the company’s industry-leading work to address health-related social needs and health equity. Passionate about improving health outcomes and reducing disparities, Agrawal draws on his clinical and business expertise to push for a more equitable health space for the people Elevance Health serves. He also leads Elevance Health’s community health strategy and the Elevance Health Foundation. Previously, Dr. Agrawal served as president and CEO of the National Quality Forum, deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and director of one of its largest centers, the Center for Program Integrity.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>71a380d1-0fd1-4913-8f65-341e24f5070fWed, 29 Nov 2023 05:00:00 -040035:56falsefull218182Reinvigorating Democracy with Dr. Tony ItonFor Dr. Tony Iton, we have to understand the past before we can shape the future. Our history of racism and exclusion laid the foundation for poor health in America. The way out is not simply delivering more and better services – it is building the voice and power of communities. Tony led The California Endowment’s nearly $2 billion and decade-long investment to test this approach.

  He shares his journey from Canada to the US to attend medical school and his eye-opening awakening to the stark disparities in Baltimore that led him to coin the phrase “your zip code is more important than your genetic code in determining health.”

  We discuss:

  • The ABC’s of health equity in California: agency, belonging and fundamental conditions
  • The power of narrative to shape policy choices towards either belonging or exclusion
  • How California communities applied this framework to dramatically change school climate and reduce suspensions
  
  

  Tony calls on public health to move away from medicine and towards its community-oriented roots:

  “[Public health has] essentially tried to mimic the healthcare delivery system. And it doesn't belong on that stage, it's a very different kind of entity. Where  public health actually proves itself to be authentic, is when it's in direct partnership with community. And it's about bringing the people who are closest to the pain into these decision making processes, so that we get true equity, we get solutions that are grounded in an understanding of how these things play out in people's lives. That's where public health is operating at its best and highest purpose.“

  Relevant Links

  • Building community power to dismantle policy-based structural inequity in health
  • Building healthy communities: Five drivers of change
  • Shifting from technocratic to democratic solutions: A radical vision for health and racial equality
  • Unnatural Causes documentary
  
  

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Tony Iton is a Senior Vice President for Healthy Communities at The California Endowment. In the fall of 2009, he began to oversee the organization’s 10-Year, multimillion-dollar statewide commitment to advance policies and forge partnerships to build healthy communities and a healthy California. Iton serves on the board of directors of the Public Health Institute, the Public Health Trust, the Prevention Institute and Jobs For The Future. He is also an Advisor to the Dean and Lecturer at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn 

  ]]>For Dr. Tony Iton, we have to understand the past before we can shape the future. Our history of racism and exclusion laid the foundation for poor health in America. The way out is not simply delivering more and better services – it is building the voice and power of communities. Tony led The California Endowment’s nearly $2 billion and decade-long investment to test this approach.

  He shares his journey from Canada to the US to attend medical school and his eye-opening awakening to the stark disparities in Baltimore that led him to coin the phrase “your zip code is more important than your genetic code in determining health.”

  We discuss:

  • The ABC’s of health equity in California: agency, belonging and fundamental conditions
  • The power of narrative to shape policy choices towards either belonging or exclusion
  • How California communities applied this framework to dramatically change school climate and reduce suspensions
  
  

  Tony calls on public health to move away from medicine and towards its community-oriented roots:

  “[Public health has] essentially tried to mimic the healthcare delivery system. And it doesn't belong on that stage, it's a very different kind of entity. Where  public health actually proves itself to be authentic, is when it's in direct partnership with community. And it's about bringing the people who are closest to the pain into these decision making processes, so that we get true equity, we get solutions that are grounded in an understanding of how these things play out in people's lives. That's where public health is operating at its best and highest purpose.“

  Relevant Links

  • Building community power to dismantle policy-based structural inequity in health
  • Building healthy communities: Five drivers of change
  • Shifting from technocratic to democratic solutions: A radical vision for health and racial equality
  • Unnatural Causes documentary
  
  

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Tony Iton is a Senior Vice President for Healthy Communities at The California Endowment. In the fall of 2009, he began to oversee the organization’s 10-Year, multimillion-dollar statewide commitment to advance policies and forge partnerships to build healthy communities and a healthy California. Iton serves on the board of directors of the Public Health Institute, the Public Health Trust, the Prevention Institute and Jobs For The Future. He is also an Advisor to the Dean and Lecturer at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn 

  ]]>a402bf1b-9b80-49cc-8c7c-1f68673f3a5eWed, 01 Nov 2023 05:00:00 -040045:23falsefull217172Data Foundations with Jess KahnIf we want people to experience whole person health – states will have to do a lot of silo-busting to integrate, streamline and coordinate disparate medical, social and economic programs. Data will be the axis of the strategy, but who owns that data and what guardrails are needed? How do we encourage not just data but also technology sharing across state programs?

  Jess Kahn joins me to discuss state efforts to integrate programs, technology and data to support whole person health. She’s a partner at McKinsey specializing in state Medicaid and social service programs, public-sector data and technology. Before joining McKinsey she led Medicaid data and systems at CMS. 

  We discuss:

  • Dual lessons from COVID: the danger of public health data silos and the possibility of rapid innovation
  • The technology and data infrastructure states are building for whole person health
  • How states are partnering with nonprofit health data utilities 
  • The big miss from the national EHR rollout: user-centered design 
  
  

  Jess highlights the dangerous gap in federal authority and accountability around the sensitive social data:

  "So the risks are really clear… this is data that tells you a lot more about the vulnerabilities people have … There isn't a federal agency that asserts that they have some kind of legal authority to set boundaries … Who's going to write that regulation? Who's going to tell state Medicaid agencies – or any entity for that matter – what the guardrails are around collection, around sharing, around ownership?”

  #healthcare #investments #housing #medicaid #health #socialdeterminantsofhealth #managedcare 

  Relevant Links

  Health Data Utility Framework - a Guide to Implementation [PDF]

  Hubert Humphrey Quote in HHS Building 

  Websites of Health Data Utilities Mentioned in Episode:

  CRISP Health

  Contexture

  CyncHealth 

  IHIE

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Jess Kahn has over 25 years of experience in national, state, and local healthcare programs in government, not-for-profit, and corporate settings. She is a partner at McKinsey specializing in state Medicaid and social services programs, public-sector data, and technology. Jess was recently named one of the four Most Influential Women in Healthcare IT by HIMSS for 2018. Prior to joining McKinsey, Jess led data and systems for Medicaid at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, including authoring major policies governing $5 billion in annual federal investments in state eligibility, claims processing, data analytics and health information exchange systems – establishing the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program, and building the flagship national Medicaid data set.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn 

  ]]>If we want people to experience whole person health – states will have to do a lot of silo-busting to integrate, streamline and coordinate disparate medical, social and economic programs. Data will be the axis of the strategy, but who owns that data and what guardrails are needed? How do we encourage not just data but also technology sharing across state programs?

  Jess Kahn joins me to discuss state efforts to integrate programs, technology and data to support whole person health. She’s a partner at McKinsey specializing in state Medicaid and social service programs, public-sector data and technology. Before joining McKinsey she led Medicaid data and systems at CMS. 

  We discuss:

  • Dual lessons from COVID: the danger of public health data silos and the possibility of rapid innovation
  • The technology and data infrastructure states are building for whole person health
  • How states are partnering with nonprofit health data utilities 
  • The big miss from the national EHR rollout: user-centered design 
  
  

  Jess highlights the dangerous gap in federal authority and accountability around the sensitive social data:

  "So the risks are really clear… this is data that tells you a lot more about the vulnerabilities people have … There isn't a federal agency that asserts that they have some kind of legal authority to set boundaries … Who's going to write that regulation? Who's going to tell state Medicaid agencies – or any entity for that matter – what the guardrails are around collection, around sharing, around ownership?”

  #healthcare #investments #housing #medicaid #health #socialdeterminantsofhealth #managedcare 

  Relevant Links

  Health Data Utility Framework - a Guide to Implementation [PDF]

  Hubert Humphrey Quote in HHS Building 

  Websites of Health Data Utilities Mentioned in Episode:

  CRISP Health

  Contexture

  CyncHealth 

  IHIE

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Jess Kahn has over 25 years of experience in national, state, and local healthcare programs in government, not-for-profit, and corporate settings. She is a partner at McKinsey specializing in state Medicaid and social services programs, public-sector data, and technology. Jess was recently named one of the four Most Influential Women in Healthcare IT by HIMSS for 2018. Prior to joining McKinsey, Jess led data and systems for Medicaid at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, including authoring major policies governing $5 billion in annual federal investments in state eligibility, claims processing, data analytics and health information exchange systems – establishing the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program, and building the flagship national Medicaid data set.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn 

  ]]>6a330058-d07c-47cd-8c38-627f6db85409Tue, 17 Oct 2023 04:00:00 -040040:39falsefull216162Implementation Matters with Jennifer PahlkaIn this episode, recorded live at the Civitas Networks for Health conference in DC, I sit down with Jennifer Pahlka, author of "Recoding America", to discuss how to improve implementation and impact of big new policy initiatives. The book and episode are essential reading and listening for anyone trying to make government – or any ambitious project - work for people.

  We discuss: 

  • The dangers of treating the bureaucracy – not citizens – as the client
  • Closing the gap between intellectuals (policymakers) and mechanicals (implementers)
  • What policymakers can learn from agile 
  • Using data as a compass not a grade
  
  

  Jen points out that a waterfall approach to policy implementation is a pledge not to learn:

  “... When you see us trying to implement law and policy by always having information flow from the top to the bottom, and never letting it return back, that's the problem. There can be no software development involved in this at all. And we can still be in a waterfall. The reason waterfall is a metaphor is that water only flows one way.”

  #healthcare #investments #housing #medicaid #health #socialdeterminantsofhealth #managedcare 

  Relevant Links

  Jennifer Pahlka’s book Recoding America

  United States Digital Service

  Code for America

  Civitas Networks for Health 

  Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing without Organizations”

  Clay Shirky’s book, “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age”

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Jennifer Pahlka is the author of Recoding America, and a pioneer in making government work for people in the digital age. She founded Code for America in 2010 and led the organization for ten years. In 2013, she took a leave of absence to serve as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama and helped found the United States Digital Service. She served on the Defense Innovation Board, started by the late Ash Carter, under Presidents Obama and Trump. At the start of the pandemic, she also co-founded United States Digital Response, which helps government meet the needs of the public with volunteer tech support. She has received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and was named by Wired as one of the 25 people who has most shaped the past 25 years. Jennifer is a graduate of Yale University and lives in California with her husband, Tim O’Reilly.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>In this episode, recorded live at the Civitas Networks for Health conference in DC, I sit down with Jennifer Pahlka, author of "Recoding America", to discuss how to improve implementation and impact of big new policy initiatives. The book and episode are essential reading and listening for anyone trying to make government – or any ambitious project - work for people.

  We discuss: 

  • The dangers of treating the bureaucracy – not citizens – as the client
  • Closing the gap between intellectuals (policymakers) and mechanicals (implementers)
  • What policymakers can learn from agile 
  • Using data as a compass not a grade
  
  

  Jen points out that a waterfall approach to policy implementation is a pledge not to learn:

  “... When you see us trying to implement law and policy by always having information flow from the top to the bottom, and never letting it return back, that's the problem. There can be no software development involved in this at all. And we can still be in a waterfall. The reason waterfall is a metaphor is that water only flows one way.”

  #healthcare #investments #housing #medicaid #health #socialdeterminantsofhealth #managedcare 

  Relevant Links

  Jennifer Pahlka’s book Recoding America

  United States Digital Service

  Code for America

  Civitas Networks for Health 

  Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing without Organizations”

  Clay Shirky’s book, “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age”

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Jennifer Pahlka is the author of Recoding America, and a pioneer in making government work for people in the digital age. She founded Code for America in 2010 and led the organization for ten years. In 2013, she took a leave of absence to serve as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama and helped found the United States Digital Service. She served on the Defense Innovation Board, started by the late Ash Carter, under Presidents Obama and Trump. At the start of the pandemic, she also co-founded United States Digital Response, which helps government meet the needs of the public with volunteer tech support. She has received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and was named by Wired as one of the 25 people who has most shaped the past 25 years. Jennifer is a graduate of Yale University and lives in California with her husband, Tim O’Reilly.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>6b63c6dd-655d-49e1-8a34-9678f0f37ff4Wed, 04 Oct 2023 04:45:00 -040040:34falsefull215152Radical Incrementalism with Dr. Pooja MittalAs Chief Health Equity Officer, Dr. Pooja Mittal is charged with improving equity and care for Health Net’s 3 million California members. She brings a strong data focus, skills in community organizing and a passion for social justice to this work – continuing her mother’s path as a family practice doctor working with farmworkers in California. 

  We discuss: 

  • Co-designing more equitable outcomes with communities and members
  • How member grievance and appeal data provides a roadmap to missed opportunities, discrimination and road blocks
  • Health Net’s experience implementing a doula benefit which laid the groundwork for statewide rollout of doula services in Medicaid 
  • The importance of reducing complexity and administrative barriers for new community partners
  
  

  Dr. Mittal tell us how she combats fatigue on the road to health equity:

  “How do I continue the work? … I try and think about the power of radical incremental change … How every little thing that we do actually has the power to have ripple effects that improve health for people, broadly. And so that's one way I sort of combat that. And then the other is really coming back to my why … Why am I in this work? Why does it matter to me, and what am I trying to accomplish?”

  Relevant Links

  Street Medicine - MLKCH and Expanding Access to Care (Page 5)

  Street Medicine - $1.5M USC Grant

  Unhoused - $114M with LA Care Health Plan

  COVID Support - Initiatives

  COVID Support - RV Program

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Pooja Mittal is Medical Director of Health Equity at HealthNet, a Medicaid managed care organization. She is a family physician and uses this lens to design strategic initiatives to improve care for the most vulnerable. She is a member of the leadership team that works to further equitable care through a population health model for all HealthNet members. She has an expertise in digital health through her work in the HealthNet Digital Platforms Workgroup devising a defined digital strategy to support quality and member engagement.

  Dr. Mittal also works at the National Clinicians Consultation Center at UCSF, a national HIV/AIDS warmline, where she is recognized as a national expert on Perinatal HIV care. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University School of Medicine. In addition to her clinical work, she has published in the areas of well-child care, group visits, preconception care, health equity and perinatal HIV.

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

  ]]>As Chief Health Equity Officer, Dr. Pooja Mittal is charged with improving equity and care for Health Net’s 3 million California members. She brings a strong data focus, skills in community organizing and a passion for social justice to this work – continuing her mother’s path as a family practice doctor working with farmworkers in California. 

  We discuss: 

  • Co-designing more equitable outcomes with communities and members
  • How member grievance and appeal data provides a roadmap to missed opportunities, discrimination and road blocks
  • Health Net’s experience implementing a doula benefit which laid the groundwork for statewide rollout of doula services in Medicaid 
  • The importance of reducing complexity and administrative barriers for new community partners
  
  

  Dr. Mittal tell us how she combats fatigue on the road to health equity:

  “How do I continue the work? … I try and think about the power of radical incremental change … How every little thing that we do actually has the power to have ripple effects that improve health for people, broadly. And so that's one way I sort of combat that. And then the other is really coming back to my why … Why am I in this work? Why does it matter to me, and what am I trying to accomplish?”

  Relevant Links

  Street Medicine - MLKCH and Expanding Access to Care (Page 5)

  Street Medicine - $1.5M USC Grant

  Unhoused - $114M with LA Care Health Plan

  COVID Support - Initiatives

  COVID Support - RV Program

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Pooja Mittal is Medical Director of Health Equity at HealthNet, a Medicaid managed care organization. She is a family physician and uses this lens to design strategic initiatives to improve care for the most vulnerable. She is a member of the leadership team that works to further equitable care through a population health model for all HealthNet members. She has an expertise in digital health through her work in the HealthNet Digital Platforms Workgroup devising a defined digital strategy to support quality and member engagement.

  Dr. Mittal also works at the National Clinicians Consultation Center at UCSF, a national HIV/AIDS warmline, where she is recognized as a national expert on Perinatal HIV care. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University School of Medicine. In addition to her clinical work, she has published in the areas of well-child care, group visits, preconception care, health equity and perinatal HIV.

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn

  ]]>0864d7ec-7a4a-47d8-a8f9-6744f100a959Wed, 20 Sep 2023 05:00:00 -040038:04falsefull214142Evidence, Community and Governance with Alan WeilIn Season 2 we’ll be drilling down on questions about what works and how to scale. Alan Weil is a great person to kick off this conversation. He is the editor of the premiere health policy journal Health Affairs, previously directed Medicaid in Colorado and led an ambitious health study at the Urban Institute. 

  We discuss:

  • How states use Medicaid to create entirely new delivery systems
  • That we should not bank on savings from whole person care
  • The keys to successful implementation: focus on customer experience, implement iteratively and have strong feedback loops 
  • The missed opportunities to understand and solve for the underlying roots of inequity
  
  

  The conversation ended in an unexpected place - a discussion of governance and power:

  “If a pot of funds being used to improve the health of a population is governed by a nonprofit health system, a state or a state authority, a county or a local authority or government or a community based organization, each of those enterprises will begin the process differently, which leads me to believe that they will almost certainly end the process differently … And we don't have a lot of examples in this country have the kind of community governance of resources that I think would be most valuable,"

  Relevant Links

  Alan Weil’s podcast “A Health Podyssey”

  A Conversation on Health Equity with Alan Weil

  Commonwealth Fund ROI Calculator for Partnerships to Address the Social Determinants of Health

  Building Community Power To Dismantle Policy-Based Structural Inequity In Population Health

  Medicaid Transformation: Past, Present and Future with Alan Weil of Health Affairs

  The Results of the CMMI Accountable Health Communities Model 1

  The Results of the CMMI Accountable Health Communities Model 2

  About Our Guest

  Alan Weil is the Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, the nation's leading journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. For the previous decade he was the executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research and policy organization. Before that, he directed the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project, one of the largest privately funded social policy research projects ever undertaken in the United States; held a cabinet position as executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing; and was assistant general counsel in the Massachusetts Department of Medical Security. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley, a master's degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Follow Alan Weil @alanrweil on Twitter for the latest developments in health policy and Health Affairs.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>In Season 2 we’ll be drilling down on questions about what works and how to scale. Alan Weil is a great person to kick off this conversation. He is the editor of the premiere health policy journal Health Affairs, previously directed Medicaid in Colorado and led an ambitious health study at the Urban Institute. 

  We discuss:

  • How states use Medicaid to create entirely new delivery systems
  • That we should not bank on savings from whole person care
  • The keys to successful implementation: focus on customer experience, implement iteratively and have strong feedback loops 
  • The missed opportunities to understand and solve for the underlying roots of inequity
  
  

  The conversation ended in an unexpected place - a discussion of governance and power:

  “If a pot of funds being used to improve the health of a population is governed by a nonprofit health system, a state or a state authority, a county or a local authority or government or a community based organization, each of those enterprises will begin the process differently, which leads me to believe that they will almost certainly end the process differently … And we don't have a lot of examples in this country have the kind of community governance of resources that I think would be most valuable,"

  Relevant Links

  Alan Weil’s podcast “A Health Podyssey”

  A Conversation on Health Equity with Alan Weil

  Commonwealth Fund ROI Calculator for Partnerships to Address the Social Determinants of Health

  Building Community Power To Dismantle Policy-Based Structural Inequity In Population Health

  Medicaid Transformation: Past, Present and Future with Alan Weil of Health Affairs

  The Results of the CMMI Accountable Health Communities Model 1

  The Results of the CMMI Accountable Health Communities Model 2

  About Our Guest

  Alan Weil is the Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, the nation's leading journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. For the previous decade he was the executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research and policy organization. Before that, he directed the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project, one of the largest privately funded social policy research projects ever undertaken in the United States; held a cabinet position as executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing; and was assistant general counsel in the Massachusetts Department of Medical Security. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley, a master's degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Follow Alan Weil @alanrweil on Twitter for the latest developments in health policy and Health Affairs.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>bde8f82f-0420-499c-91ce-e303e153de76Wed, 06 Sep 2023 04:45:00 -040040:14falsefull213132What I've Learned So Far with Claudia WilliamsWhen Claudia Williams started The Other 80 she was searching for evidence that whole person care – meaning the integration of social and medical care – is a viable model to bring more equity and health to all Americans. 

  We started with some big questions. Can we flip the US healthcare system, making it more compassionate, more effective and more focused on health? Can we better address poverty's impact on health by integrating the often siloed worlds of medical and social care?

  In this episode Claudia sits down with her producer Avery Moore Kloss to discuss lessons learned and highlights from Season One and share what’s on deck for Season Two. 

  We discuss what we learned in Season One: 

  • Data is the foundation of whole person health, but can also create new harms
  • Organizations expert in sick care will not also be expert in community health 
  • We need new organizations and leaders combining these traits: health not sickness focused, the ability to scale, community-embeddedness and deep use of technology and data
  • Success requires ecosystem thinking, effective partnering and purposely balancing power differentials 
  • Addressing equity takes time and trust
  • Learning in public – like we are doing on this podcast – is critically important to speed the national learning curve on health beyond medical care
  
  

  Claudia also shares her biggest takeaway:

  “Underneath a lot of this is just poverty and how hard it is to live in the United States if one is poor. And so I think the question that I'm still grappling with is how far should we go in putting on people who are working in health the responsibility of the impact of poverty? And one one way to answer that is to say, well look at all the resources that are in healthcare, yes, of course, this is what's making people not healthy. Of course, we should spend these resources on housing, on food on other things. Other people, though, are saying, but wait a minute, those people are delivering health services, they're not even delivering health services well, why should there be this expanded mandate for them?”

  About Our Guest

  Claudia Williams is a healthcare executive and entrepreneur who is passionate about creating the conditions, policies, systems and learning to enable health for all. Claudia was the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Manifest MedEx – one of the nation’s largest health data sharing initiatives. She served as Senior Advisor for Health Innovation and Technology at the White House under President Obama, building policies and programs for care transformation, data sharing, and precision health. Claudia is a graduate of Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, where she earned her MS degree in Health Policy and Management. Claudia served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>When Claudia Williams started The Other 80 she was searching for evidence that whole person care – meaning the integration of social and medical care – is a viable model to bring more equity and health to all Americans. 

  We started with some big questions. Can we flip the US healthcare system, making it more compassionate, more effective and more focused on health? Can we better address poverty's impact on health by integrating the often siloed worlds of medical and social care?

  In this episode Claudia sits down with her producer Avery Moore Kloss to discuss lessons learned and highlights from Season One and share what’s on deck for Season Two. 

  We discuss what we learned in Season One: 

  • Data is the foundation of whole person health, but can also create new harms
  • Organizations expert in sick care will not also be expert in community health 
  • We need new organizations and leaders combining these traits: health not sickness focused, the ability to scale, community-embeddedness and deep use of technology and data
  • Success requires ecosystem thinking, effective partnering and purposely balancing power differentials 
  • Addressing equity takes time and trust
  • Learning in public – like we are doing on this podcast – is critically important to speed the national learning curve on health beyond medical care
  
  

  Claudia also shares her biggest takeaway:

  “Underneath a lot of this is just poverty and how hard it is to live in the United States if one is poor. And so I think the question that I'm still grappling with is how far should we go in putting on people who are working in health the responsibility of the impact of poverty? And one one way to answer that is to say, well look at all the resources that are in healthcare, yes, of course, this is what's making people not healthy. Of course, we should spend these resources on housing, on food on other things. Other people, though, are saying, but wait a minute, those people are delivering health services, they're not even delivering health services well, why should there be this expanded mandate for them?”

  About Our Guest

  Claudia Williams is a healthcare executive and entrepreneur who is passionate about creating the conditions, policies, systems and learning to enable health for all. Claudia was the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Manifest MedEx – one of the nation’s largest health data sharing initiatives. She served as Senior Advisor for Health Innovation and Technology at the White House under President Obama, building policies and programs for care transformation, data sharing, and precision health. Claudia is a graduate of Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, where she earned her MS degree in Health Policy and Management. Claudia served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>684c543b-4291-4d8b-a46e-64a5ee194893Wed, 26 Jul 2023 05:00:00 -040042:56falsefull1212Health is Social Justice Work with Dr. Clemens HongFor Dr. Clemens Hong, health is social justice work, rooted in the community-oriented primary care movement of the 1960s. He joins us for a powerful interview about on-the-ground implementation of whole person care in a county bigger than many countries. Dr. Hong leads community programs for LA County including housing supports, reentry and diversion programs, street-based outreach, and benefits navigation. We talk about the “mountain of challenges” people face when they return to the community from jail and prison, and the need to build the capacity and agency of community organizations and peer experts.

  We discuss: 

  • The impact of Intergenerational trauma, systemic racism and mass incarceration on health
  • Deep dives on reentry and housing for health
  • His suggestions for CalAIM: broader eligibility, improved access to services, and making community supports an actual benefit
  • Creating sustainable work and impact
  
  

  Clemens shares the striking results from introducing community health workers with lived experience:

  "There's a study that's been done by the Transitions Clinic, and one of our partner sites, Santa Clara, where they showed that arrival to the first appointment after incarceration increased from 30% to 70%, with their hiring …  a community health worker with lived experience… Engagement is the foundation to anything we can do in delivering health to communities: engagement of the individual and the survivors of trauma, but also the communities organizations are really critical”

  Relevant Links

  Housing for Health - Housing For Health (lacounty.gov)

  Office of Diversion and Reentry - OFFICE OF DIVERSION AND REENTRY (lacounty.gov)

  Knitting Together Health and Social Services in Los Angeles

  Impact Report from Whole Person Care Pilots in Los Angeles [PDF]

  Community-Oriented Primary Care: A Path to Community Development

  About Our Guest

  Dr Clemens Hong, MD, MPH, is Director of Community Programs for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services where he oversees multiple County programs including Housing for Health, the Office of Diversion and Reentry, Whole Person Care, My Health LA, CalAIM, and COVID-19 Testing. In 2006 he co-founded the Transitions Clinic with Dr. Emily Wang in San Francisco. He taught for several years at Harvard Medical School, and joined Massachusetts General Hospital as a primary care general internist and health services researcher.  Dr. Hong received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Washington and his Master’s Degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed internal medicine training in the San Francisco General Hospital Primary Care Program at UCSF, as well as a general medicine fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>For Dr. Clemens Hong, health is social justice work, rooted in the community-oriented primary care movement of the 1960s. He joins us for a powerful interview about on-the-ground implementation of whole person care in a county bigger than many countries. Dr. Hong leads community programs for LA County including housing supports, reentry and diversion programs, street-based outreach, and benefits navigation. We talk about the “mountain of challenges” people face when they return to the community from jail and prison, and the need to build the capacity and agency of community organizations and peer experts.

  We discuss: 

  • The impact of Intergenerational trauma, systemic racism and mass incarceration on health
  • Deep dives on reentry and housing for health
  • His suggestions for CalAIM: broader eligibility, improved access to services, and making community supports an actual benefit
  • Creating sustainable work and impact
  
  

  Clemens shares the striking results from introducing community health workers with lived experience:

  "There's a study that's been done by the Transitions Clinic, and one of our partner sites, Santa Clara, where they showed that arrival to the first appointment after incarceration increased from 30% to 70%, with their hiring …  a community health worker with lived experience… Engagement is the foundation to anything we can do in delivering health to communities: engagement of the individual and the survivors of trauma, but also the communities organizations are really critical”

  Relevant Links

  Housing for Health - Housing For Health (lacounty.gov)

  Office of Diversion and Reentry - OFFICE OF DIVERSION AND REENTRY (lacounty.gov)

  Knitting Together Health and Social Services in Los Angeles

  Impact Report from Whole Person Care Pilots in Los Angeles [PDF]

  Community-Oriented Primary Care: A Path to Community Development

  About Our Guest

  Dr Clemens Hong, MD, MPH, is Director of Community Programs for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services where he oversees multiple County programs including Housing for Health, the Office of Diversion and Reentry, Whole Person Care, My Health LA, CalAIM, and COVID-19 Testing. In 2006 he co-founded the Transitions Clinic with Dr. Emily Wang in San Francisco. He taught for several years at Harvard Medical School, and joined Massachusetts General Hospital as a primary care general internist and health services researcher.  Dr. Hong received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Washington and his Master’s Degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed internal medicine training in the San Francisco General Hospital Primary Care Program at UCSF, as well as a general medicine fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>91688acd-b21a-4670-b646-c574cc52eabeWed, 12 Jul 2023 03:30:00 -040047:36falsefull1111Breaking Stigma and Supporting Recovery with Corbin PetroNearly half of Americans have a family member or close friend who’s been addicted to drugs. And most are not getting the help they need. The US has a 94 percent treatment gap for substance use disorders. Treatments are expensive, ineffective, or they’re simply not available. Corbin Petro is on a mission to close this gap. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Eleanor Health, providing evidence-based whole person care for people with substance use disorders and mental health needs. 

  We discuss: 

  • That addiction is a treatable chronic disorder just like Diabetes
  • The negative consequences of separating the brain and the body in healthcare delivery and policy
  • Why she’s fired up about closing health equity gaps
  • How Medicaid founders can get paid for outcomes and pick the right markets
  
  

  Corbin reminds us that we need to lean more on community health workers and other non-licensed experts:

  "One of the challenges with workforce is the belief that care needs to be delivered at all times by … a very expensive specialty clinician. And I think we need as a society to more embrace non-licensed people ... [such as] community health workers, peers, others who can really support and deliver great outcomes."

  Relevant Links

  Eleanor Health website

  In Recovery with Eleanor Health (podcast with co-founder Dr. Nzinga Harrison)

  Highlights from the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health from SAMSHA [PDF]

  About Our Guest

  Corbin Petro is an experienced CEO, industry leader, and entrepreneur with a mission-driven, analytic approach to innovation. She is the CEO and co-founder of Eleanor Health, providing evidence-based, whole person care specializing in addressing the unique complexities of individuals and populations with substance use disorders and mental health needs. Eleanor Health leverages proprietary technology and data-driven insights, compassionate teams, and value-based payment to deliver superior clinical and financial outcomes. Prior to Eleanor Health, Corbin was the founding CEO of Benevera Health, a payer-provider JV and population health company. Corbin has an extensive background in healthcare including working on state Medicaid, advising a US Senator and in management consulting. She was honored as one of fifteen healthcare executives under 40 named a 2018 Up and Comer by Modern Healthcare. She received a BA from Yale University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. 

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>Nearly half of Americans have a family member or close friend who’s been addicted to drugs. And most are not getting the help they need. The US has a 94 percent treatment gap for substance use disorders. Treatments are expensive, ineffective, or they’re simply not available. Corbin Petro is on a mission to close this gap. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Eleanor Health, providing evidence-based whole person care for people with substance use disorders and mental health needs. 

  We discuss: 

  • That addiction is a treatable chronic disorder just like Diabetes
  • The negative consequences of separating the brain and the body in healthcare delivery and policy
  • Why she’s fired up about closing health equity gaps
  • How Medicaid founders can get paid for outcomes and pick the right markets
  
  

  Corbin reminds us that we need to lean more on community health workers and other non-licensed experts:

  "One of the challenges with workforce is the belief that care needs to be delivered at all times by … a very expensive specialty clinician. And I think we need as a society to more embrace non-licensed people ... [such as] community health workers, peers, others who can really support and deliver great outcomes."

  Relevant Links

  Eleanor Health website

  In Recovery with Eleanor Health (podcast with co-founder Dr. Nzinga Harrison)

  Highlights from the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health from SAMSHA [PDF]

  About Our Guest

  Corbin Petro is an experienced CEO, industry leader, and entrepreneur with a mission-driven, analytic approach to innovation. She is the CEO and co-founder of Eleanor Health, providing evidence-based, whole person care specializing in addressing the unique complexities of individuals and populations with substance use disorders and mental health needs. Eleanor Health leverages proprietary technology and data-driven insights, compassionate teams, and value-based payment to deliver superior clinical and financial outcomes. Prior to Eleanor Health, Corbin was the founding CEO of Benevera Health, a payer-provider JV and population health company. Corbin has an extensive background in healthcare including working on state Medicaid, advising a US Senator and in management consulting. She was honored as one of fifteen healthcare executives under 40 named a 2018 Up and Comer by Modern Healthcare. She received a BA from Yale University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. 

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>4affc204-196c-40a1-ac2f-7b7ff1f54ea6Wed, 28 Jun 2023 04:00:00 -040040:52falsefull1010Reflecting on Year One of CalAIM with Jacey CooperJacey Cooper, California’s Medicaid Director,  gives us an on-the-ground look at California’s pathbreaking CalAIM initiative that pairs intensive care management with access to a broad range of social services. It’s been a year since the program launched and Jacey reflects on how much communication, coordination, planning and agility was needed to implement a program of this size and breadth. Claudia and Jacey talk about opportunities and challenges as plans and providers navigate new benefits and participate in local housing, food, and community development conversations. 

  We discuss: 

  • Lessons learned from the first year of CalAIM including the need for more standardization of social care benefits across health plans 
  • More details about the first-of-its-kind Justice Initiative which provides pre-release Medicaid services to people in jail and prison
  • Behavioral health redesign, payment reform, transitions of care, and administrative integration of mental health and substance use disorder services
  
  

  Jacey says whole person care is truly a community effort:

  "As a collective force, we're making sure that plans are adapted to work with community-based organizations that have been championing these efforts for years. This is why we're focusing on embedding ourselves in the different aspects of care continuums - like housing and homelessness - within our local groups. We have to be present to have a voice in the decision-making, planning, and connection of individuals to vital services. It's not just about navigating people to housing, but ensuring they're connected to voucher programs too."

  #healthcare #investments #housing #medicaid #health #socialdeterminantsofhealth #managedcare 

  Relevant Links

  CalAIM Primer [PDF]

  Final Evaluation of California’s Whole Person Care Pilots [PDF]

  Fact Sheet on CalAIM Justice-Involved Initiative [PDF]

  Fact Sheet on CalAIM Population Health Management [PDF]

  Fact Sheets on CalAIM Community Supports [PDF 1] [PDF 2]

  Reflections on CalAIM’s first year [Blog]

  About Our Guest

  Jacey Cooper serves as State Medicaid Director and Chief Deputy Director for Health Care Programs at the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS). Ms. Cooper is responsible for the overall leadership of Benefits, Eligibility, Delivery Systems, Financing, Behavioral Health, Quality, and Population Health. Prior to serving as State Medicaid Director, Jacey served in various roles at DHCS beginning in April 2016. Prior to her work at DHCS, Ms. Cooper was Vice President at Kern Medical Center, a public hospital and a health care consultant. Through that work, she gained more than 15 years’ experience in health care policy, operations, integrated delivery models, managed care, business development, and quality monitoring.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>Jacey Cooper, California’s Medicaid Director,  gives us an on-the-ground look at California’s pathbreaking CalAIM initiative that pairs intensive care management with access to a broad range of social services. It’s been a year since the program launched and Jacey reflects on how much communication, coordination, planning and agility was needed to implement a program of this size and breadth. Claudia and Jacey talk about opportunities and challenges as plans and providers navigate new benefits and participate in local housing, food, and community development conversations. 

  We discuss: 

  • Lessons learned from the first year of CalAIM including the need for more standardization of social care benefits across health plans 
  • More details about the first-of-its-kind Justice Initiative which provides pre-release Medicaid services to people in jail and prison
  • Behavioral health redesign, payment reform, transitions of care, and administrative integration of mental health and substance use disorder services
  
  

  Jacey says whole person care is truly a community effort:

  "As a collective force, we're making sure that plans are adapted to work with community-based organizations that have been championing these efforts for years. This is why we're focusing on embedding ourselves in the different aspects of care continuums - like housing and homelessness - within our local groups. We have to be present to have a voice in the decision-making, planning, and connection of individuals to vital services. It's not just about navigating people to housing, but ensuring they're connected to voucher programs too."

  #healthcare #investments #housing #medicaid #health #socialdeterminantsofhealth #managedcare 

  Relevant Links

  CalAIM Primer [PDF]

  Final Evaluation of California’s Whole Person Care Pilots [PDF]

  Fact Sheet on CalAIM Justice-Involved Initiative [PDF]

  Fact Sheet on CalAIM Population Health Management [PDF]

  Fact Sheets on CalAIM Community Supports [PDF 1] [PDF 2]

  Reflections on CalAIM’s first year [Blog]

  About Our Guest

  Jacey Cooper serves as State Medicaid Director and Chief Deputy Director for Health Care Programs at the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS). Ms. Cooper is responsible for the overall leadership of Benefits, Eligibility, Delivery Systems, Financing, Behavioral Health, Quality, and Population Health. Prior to serving as State Medicaid Director, Jacey served in various roles at DHCS beginning in April 2016. Prior to her work at DHCS, Ms. Cooper was Vice President at Kern Medical Center, a public hospital and a health care consultant. Through that work, she gained more than 15 years’ experience in health care policy, operations, integrated delivery models, managed care, business development, and quality monitoring.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>119cb033-8105-4e91-be1e-d264fbd6e687Wed, 14 Jun 2023 05:00:00 -040037:18falsefull99The Healthcare Leadership Crisis with Dr. Sachin JainSachin Jain is setting out to build a very different kind of company—a nationally scaled nonprofit health plan, grounded in Scan’s founding story of 1970s community activists seeking a new future of health for vulnerable communities. In the last two years the 4.5 star Medicare plan has announced a merger with Care Oregon, launched verticals focused on delivering health services to people experiencing homelessness and LGBTQ elders, and expanded to new markets. 

  We discuss: 

  • What’s possible with a longer time horizon
  • How equity and social drivers are becoming the new hustle
  • Why healthcare should borrow less from other industries
  • How “no margin, no mission” is creating ethical laxity
  • Unfinished business from our time together at ONC
  
  

  Sachin calls for a new era of accountable leadership:

  “We need more ethical leadership in health care. And what I mean by that is we need to make sure that the words on the wall of every healthcare organization, the ethical compass, the values, the mission statements, the vision statements, actually mean something, and that the behaviors of leaders actually align to things. I think we've gotten lost in this glib “no margin, no mission” chatter, that creates this ethical laxity in organizations to begin doing things like aggressively billing their patients, or, you know, going so far as to repossess their assets when they can't pay their bills.”

  Relevant Links

  Dr Sachin Jain on Combining SCAN Group and CareOregon: “We’re Trying to Build a Very Different Kind of Company”

  L.A.'s state of emergency on homelessness: How a street medicine team is treating patients in a unique way

  SCAN launches new Medicare Advantage plan for LGBTQ+ seniors

  How One Health Plan Reduced Disparities in Medication Adherence

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Sachin Jain has worked in clinical medicine, academia, government, big pharma, and the health insurance industry. His passion is in accelerating the pace of change in health care and building a sustainable health care system that addresses the needs of patients. Dr. Jain President and CEO of SCAN Group and Health Plan, a $3.4B non-profit entity that serves over 220,000 patients.  He also serves as a physician at the US Department of Veterans Affairs.  Dr. Jain was previously president and chief executive officer of the CareMore and Aspire Health, the care delivery divisions of Anthem. He is an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and Co-Editor-in-Chief, Healthcare: the Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation and trained in internal medicine at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. He received his undergraduate (AB), medical (MD), and business degrees (MBA) from Harvard. He has worked in leadership roles at Merck and Company and the US Department of Health and Human Services and has held faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School. 

  Follow Sachin Jain on Twitter @sacjai. 

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>Sachin Jain is setting out to build a very different kind of company—a nationally scaled nonprofit health plan, grounded in Scan’s founding story of 1970s community activists seeking a new future of health for vulnerable communities. In the last two years the 4.5 star Medicare plan has announced a merger with Care Oregon, launched verticals focused on delivering health services to people experiencing homelessness and LGBTQ elders, and expanded to new markets. 

  We discuss: 

  • What’s possible with a longer time horizon
  • How equity and social drivers are becoming the new hustle
  • Why healthcare should borrow less from other industries
  • How “no margin, no mission” is creating ethical laxity
  • Unfinished business from our time together at ONC
  
  

  Sachin calls for a new era of accountable leadership:

  “We need more ethical leadership in health care. And what I mean by that is we need to make sure that the words on the wall of every healthcare organization, the ethical compass, the values, the mission statements, the vision statements, actually mean something, and that the behaviors of leaders actually align to things. I think we've gotten lost in this glib “no margin, no mission” chatter, that creates this ethical laxity in organizations to begin doing things like aggressively billing their patients, or, you know, going so far as to repossess their assets when they can't pay their bills.”

  Relevant Links

  Dr Sachin Jain on Combining SCAN Group and CareOregon: “We’re Trying to Build a Very Different Kind of Company”

  L.A.'s state of emergency on homelessness: How a street medicine team is treating patients in a unique way

  SCAN launches new Medicare Advantage plan for LGBTQ+ seniors

  How One Health Plan Reduced Disparities in Medication Adherence

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Sachin Jain has worked in clinical medicine, academia, government, big pharma, and the health insurance industry. His passion is in accelerating the pace of change in health care and building a sustainable health care system that addresses the needs of patients. Dr. Jain President and CEO of SCAN Group and Health Plan, a $3.4B non-profit entity that serves over 220,000 patients.  He also serves as a physician at the US Department of Veterans Affairs.  Dr. Jain was previously president and chief executive officer of the CareMore and Aspire Health, the care delivery divisions of Anthem. He is an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and Co-Editor-in-Chief, Healthcare: the Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation and trained in internal medicine at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. He received his undergraduate (AB), medical (MD), and business degrees (MBA) from Harvard. He has worked in leadership roles at Merck and Company and the US Department of Health and Human Services and has held faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School. 

  Follow Sachin Jain on Twitter @sacjai. 

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>81d38123-6a60-4b8d-8563-efb6e5a61033Wed, 31 May 2023 05:00:00 -040040:34falsefull88The State of Mental Health with Dr. Tom InselFormer NIMH director and renowned neuroscientist Dr. Tom Insel joins Claudia to talk about the state of mental health in America today. The conversation dives into the challenges and opportunities for improvement, the potential of technology, and what it will take to scale integrated treatment approaches across the nation. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and learn about Tom's new company, Vanna Health, which is delivering new care and payment models for people with serious mental illness.

  We discuss: 

  • Why he thinks the criminalization of mental illness is a fixable problem
  • That people, place and purpose are the foundation of recovery
  • The big engagement issue in mental health treatment
  • Why Medicaid patients don’t have access to psych hospitals
  • That effective crisis response is more than a new phone number
  
  

  Tom talks about how mental health is the biggest health disparity in the US today: 

  “Someone with a serious mental illness in the United States today is probably going to die 20 to 23 years before someone without… [that’s] the greatest health disparity that we have in the United States [and] far exceeds health disparities due to race or ethnicity. But beyond that, other forms of mortality like suicide and drug overdoses, what we call the deaths of despair, have become a massive public health issue… Suicide rates are up about 30 to 35% from the turn of the century, the mortality from drug overdoses is up about five to six fold from that time. So these are huge increases… That's a crisis we need to start talking about.”

  Relevant Links

  Tom’s book “Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health”

  More about Vanna Health

  Mental health provisions in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act

  Explanation of Medicaid IMD (institutions for mental diseases) Exclusion [PDF]

  About Our Guest

  Tom lnsel, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, has been a national leader in mental health research, policy, and technology. From 2002-2015, Dr. Insel served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). More recently (2015 – 2017), he led the Mental Health Team at Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) in South San Francisco, CA. In 2017, he co-founded Mindstrong Health, a Silicon Valley start-up building tools for people with serious mental illness. Dr. Insel co-founded Vanna Health in 2022 and currently serves as Executive Chair. Vanna Health is focused on the needs of people with serious mental illness and works with community partners to provide the 3 Ps (people, place, and purpose) for recovery. In 2020, he co-founded Humanest Care, a therapeutic online community for recovery. Since May of 2019, Dr. Insel has been a special advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom and Chair of the Board of the Steinberg Institute in Sacramento, California. He is the author of the book Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, published by Penguin Random House. With journalist co-founders, he recently launched MindSite News, a non-profit digital publication focused on mental health issues. Dr. Insel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received numerous national and international awards, including honorary degrees in the U.S. and Europe.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>Former NIMH director and renowned neuroscientist Dr. Tom Insel joins Claudia to talk about the state of mental health in America today. The conversation dives into the challenges and opportunities for improvement, the potential of technology, and what it will take to scale integrated treatment approaches across the nation. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and learn about Tom's new company, Vanna Health, which is delivering new care and payment models for people with serious mental illness.

  We discuss: 

  • Why he thinks the criminalization of mental illness is a fixable problem
  • That people, place and purpose are the foundation of recovery
  • The big engagement issue in mental health treatment
  • Why Medicaid patients don’t have access to psych hospitals
  • That effective crisis response is more than a new phone number
  
  

  Tom talks about how mental health is the biggest health disparity in the US today: 

  “Someone with a serious mental illness in the United States today is probably going to die 20 to 23 years before someone without… [that’s] the greatest health disparity that we have in the United States [and] far exceeds health disparities due to race or ethnicity. But beyond that, other forms of mortality like suicide and drug overdoses, what we call the deaths of despair, have become a massive public health issue… Suicide rates are up about 30 to 35% from the turn of the century, the mortality from drug overdoses is up about five to six fold from that time. So these are huge increases… That's a crisis we need to start talking about.”

  Relevant Links

  Tom’s book “Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health”

  More about Vanna Health

  Mental health provisions in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act

  Explanation of Medicaid IMD (institutions for mental diseases) Exclusion [PDF]

  About Our Guest

  Tom lnsel, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, has been a national leader in mental health research, policy, and technology. From 2002-2015, Dr. Insel served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). More recently (2015 – 2017), he led the Mental Health Team at Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) in South San Francisco, CA. In 2017, he co-founded Mindstrong Health, a Silicon Valley start-up building tools for people with serious mental illness. Dr. Insel co-founded Vanna Health in 2022 and currently serves as Executive Chair. Vanna Health is focused on the needs of people with serious mental illness and works with community partners to provide the 3 Ps (people, place, and purpose) for recovery. In 2020, he co-founded Humanest Care, a therapeutic online community for recovery. Since May of 2019, Dr. Insel has been a special advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom and Chair of the Board of the Steinberg Institute in Sacramento, California. He is the author of the book Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, published by Penguin Random House. With journalist co-founders, he recently launched MindSite News, a non-profit digital publication focused on mental health issues. Dr. Insel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received numerous national and international awards, including honorary degrees in the U.S. and Europe.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>2c8c4241-6d96-4b73-a745-6f7fa6663322Wed, 17 May 2023 05:00:00 -040038:48falsefull77Medicaid as an Equity Engine with Dr. Aditi MallickTwo things push Medicaid to the front of every equity conversation. First, its scale and focus. Second, its bold moves to improve equity through coverage expansions and addressing social drivers of health. Claudia chats with Dr. Aditi Mallick about Medicaid’s three-part agenda to improve equity, implement whole person care and expand coverage. Dr. Mallick — the Chief Medical Officer for Medicaid & CHIP at CMS — shares the deeply personal experience that fuels her push for health equity and access to care for all Americans. 

  We discuss: 

  • Why addressing social needs is key to achieving Medicaid’s agenda
  • Thinking in new ways about maternal and infant health
  • Two perennial challenges: workforce and data sharing 
  • Where to draw the line on what Medicaid should fund
  
  

  Aditi reminds us that pure technology plays will never work in this space:

  “I think there is a tremendous role for technology here and tech enablement here when done thoughtfully. I think a pure technology business in this space that doesn't have humans or service layered on top of it will not work, frankly, because so much of the implementation success around health related social needs will be predicated on being able to bring together people from a community setting and trusted voices… as opposed to building and throwing something at the community.”

  Relevant Links

  CMS guidance on covering in Lieu of Services through Medicaid managed care [PDF]

  CMS framework for covering health-related social needs through Section 1115 demonstrations [PDF]

  CMS “unwinding” website

  MACStats: Medicaid and CHIP data book [PDF]

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Aditi Mallick is a physician, strategic policy advisor, and former management consultant, who is driven to serve and create a more inclusive, innovative, and responsible healthcare system. She is the Chief Medical Officer for Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Before joining CMS, she was Director of the COVID-19 Response Command Center at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. A board-certified internist, Dr. Mallick has previously held clinical faculty positions at George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Mallick earned her BA with honors from Harvard College, including a Certificate in Healthcare Policy; her Medical Degree from Stanford University with a concentration in Health Services Research and Policy; and completed Internal Medicine Residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on Twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>Two things push Medicaid to the front of every equity conversation. First, its scale and focus. Second, its bold moves to improve equity through coverage expansions and addressing social drivers of health. Claudia chats with Dr. Aditi Mallick about Medicaid’s three-part agenda to improve equity, implement whole person care and expand coverage. Dr. Mallick — the Chief Medical Officer for Medicaid & CHIP at CMS — shares the deeply personal experience that fuels her push for health equity and access to care for all Americans. 

  We discuss: 

  • Why addressing social needs is key to achieving Medicaid’s agenda
  • Thinking in new ways about maternal and infant health
  • Two perennial challenges: workforce and data sharing 
  • Where to draw the line on what Medicaid should fund
  
  

  Aditi reminds us that pure technology plays will never work in this space:

  “I think there is a tremendous role for technology here and tech enablement here when done thoughtfully. I think a pure technology business in this space that doesn't have humans or service layered on top of it will not work, frankly, because so much of the implementation success around health related social needs will be predicated on being able to bring together people from a community setting and trusted voices… as opposed to building and throwing something at the community.”

  Relevant Links

  CMS guidance on covering in Lieu of Services through Medicaid managed care [PDF]

  CMS framework for covering health-related social needs through Section 1115 demonstrations [PDF]

  CMS “unwinding” website

  MACStats: Medicaid and CHIP data book [PDF]

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Aditi Mallick is a physician, strategic policy advisor, and former management consultant, who is driven to serve and create a more inclusive, innovative, and responsible healthcare system. She is the Chief Medical Officer for Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Before joining CMS, she was Director of the COVID-19 Response Command Center at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. A board-certified internist, Dr. Mallick has previously held clinical faculty positions at George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Mallick earned her BA with honors from Harvard College, including a Certificate in Healthcare Policy; her Medical Degree from Stanford University with a concentration in Health Services Research and Policy; and completed Internal Medicine Residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on Twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>a66f366d-de5c-4510-ac86-0ffe2498db1fWed, 03 May 2023 05:00:00 -040035:29falsefull66Building Trust with Abner MasonAbner Mason has spent decades working to reduce barriers to care faced by underserved people, who often experience harm and misunderstanding in their health encounters.  He joins us to talk about how to build trust in healthcare. It means slowing down to really understand and meet each person’s unique needs. That’s the work Abner leads as Founder and CEO of SameSky Health. 

  We discuss: 

  • That our work is not to judge other people’s choices, it’s to expand the opportunity set they see in front of themselves
  • How health plans are learning to have patience
  • Advice for entrepreneurs: don’t be too enamored of your own ideas
  • Using our voices to oppose hate
  • What’s at stake with Medicaid redeterminations
  
  

  Abner reminds us that people are not quality measures:

  “We focus on understanding people's priorities first, which helps us develop and maintain their trust. One of the things we've learned is that people are not quality measures; we need to prioritize them first. By figuring out what's important in their lives, we can truly make them feel heard and understood.”

  Relevant Links

  SameSky Health website

  NCQA stratification of quality measures by race and ethnicity

  FCC declaratory on texting for Medicaid redeterminations [PDF]

  Results of vaccine outreach and equity campaign [PowerPoint]

  Effective Strategies for Collecting Health-Equity-Related Member Data to Identify and Address Health Disparities [Webinar]

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Abner Mason has spent decades working to reduce barriers to care faced by underserved people nationally and internationally, from the federal to the local level. He is founder and CEO of SameSky Health, a cultural experience company that forms meaningful relationships to bring people to health. He has served on President Bush’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, as Chief Policy Advisor to the Governor of Massachusetts, and as part of the Biden-Harris Campaign Policy Committee. He currently sits on the Boards of Manifest MedEx and the California Black Health Network, is a member of United States of Care’s Founders Council, and the American Medical Association’s External Equity and Innovation Advisory Group. He is also the founder of Health Tech 4 Medicaid.

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>Abner Mason has spent decades working to reduce barriers to care faced by underserved people, who often experience harm and misunderstanding in their health encounters.  He joins us to talk about how to build trust in healthcare. It means slowing down to really understand and meet each person’s unique needs. That’s the work Abner leads as Founder and CEO of SameSky Health. 

  We discuss: 

  • That our work is not to judge other people’s choices, it’s to expand the opportunity set they see in front of themselves
  • How health plans are learning to have patience
  • Advice for entrepreneurs: don’t be too enamored of your own ideas
  • Using our voices to oppose hate
  • What’s at stake with Medicaid redeterminations
  
  

  Abner reminds us that people are not quality measures:

  “We focus on understanding people's priorities first, which helps us develop and maintain their trust. One of the things we've learned is that people are not quality measures; we need to prioritize them first. By figuring out what's important in their lives, we can truly make them feel heard and understood.”

  Relevant Links

  SameSky Health website

  NCQA stratification of quality measures by race and ethnicity

  FCC declaratory on texting for Medicaid redeterminations [PDF]

  Results of vaccine outreach and equity campaign [PowerPoint]

  Effective Strategies for Collecting Health-Equity-Related Member Data to Identify and Address Health Disparities [Webinar]

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Abner Mason has spent decades working to reduce barriers to care faced by underserved people nationally and internationally, from the federal to the local level. He is founder and CEO of SameSky Health, a cultural experience company that forms meaningful relationships to bring people to health. He has served on President Bush’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, as Chief Policy Advisor to the Governor of Massachusetts, and as part of the Biden-Harris Campaign Policy Committee. He currently sits on the Boards of Manifest MedEx and the California Black Health Network, is a member of United States of Care’s Founders Council, and the American Medical Association’s External Equity and Innovation Advisory Group. He is also the founder of Health Tech 4 Medicaid.

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>b9e4642d-b0cd-4277-b45c-39a7f4c80261Wed, 19 Apr 2023 05:00:00 -040043:23falsefull55Medicaid Investment and Innovation with Andy SlavittMany investors and founders shy away from building Medicaid-focused companies. Andy Slavitt – policymaker, investor and ‘In the Bubble’ host – joins us to discuss why this is a huge mistake. Medicaid now covers 85 million Americans and is where the opportunities to build meaningful and high impact companies are the greatest. We talk about Andy’s work at Town Hall Ventures and his takeaways from leading CMS in the Obama administration and COVID strategy in the early days of the Biden administration.

  We dive into: 

  • Why Medicaid-focused founders should think of states as 50 potential customers, not as governments
  • A few of his portfolio companies: Eleanor Health, Cityblock Health, Plume and Spark Pediatrics
  • How states can get better results from Medicaid managed care
  • The wide range of impacts from Medicaid expansion: lower medical debt and bankruptcy, increase in home ownership, and improvements in maternal, child health, cancer and cardiac outcomes
  
  

  Andy talks about the deep impact on people’s lives from having Medicaid coverage:

  “In every single study, all of those outcomes – every single one of them that are quality of life and health related – are better under Medicaid expansion. And it makes sense. If you put a little bit more money in people's pockets, put a little more security underneath them, they're going to live their lives, they are going to take that risk and take a better job, they are going to not worry as much … the kids are going to be healthier and more stable.”

  
  

  Relevant Links

  Town Hall Ventures website

  Health Affairs post showing far higher investments in Medicare- than Medicaid-focused companies 

  Medicaid facts and figures

  ASPE study estimating that 15 million people will lose Medicaid coverage with the end of continuous enrollment  

  RWJF study showing that almost two thirds of Medicaid enrollees don’t know about upcoming redeterminations

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Andy Slavitt has led many of the nation’s most important health care initiatives, serving as President Biden’s White House Senior Advisor for the COVID response, President Obama’s head of Medicare and Medicaid and overseeing the turnaround, implementation and defense of the Affordable Care Act. Slavitt is the “outsider’s insider,” serving in leading private and non-profit roles in addition to his government services. He is founder and Board Chair Emeritus of United States of Care, a national non-profit health advocacy organization as well as a founding partner of Town Hall Ventures, a healthcare firm that invests in underrepresented communities. He co-chaired a national initiative on the future of health care at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He chronicles what goes on inside the government and across the nation at town halls, in USA Today, on his award-winning podcast In the Bubble, and on twitter. He is the author of Preventable, a best-selling account of the U.S.’s coronavirus response, released in 2021. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School, he and his wife have two grown sons.

  Listen to Andy’s podcast ‘In the Bubble’

  https://lemonadamedia.com/show/inthebubble/

  Read Andy’s book ‘Preventable’

  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165/preventable

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on Twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>Many investors and founders shy away from building Medicaid-focused companies. Andy Slavitt – policymaker, investor and ‘In the Bubble’ host – joins us to discuss why this is a huge mistake. Medicaid now covers 85 million Americans and is where the opportunities to build meaningful and high impact companies are the greatest. We talk about Andy’s work at Town Hall Ventures and his takeaways from leading CMS in the Obama administration and COVID strategy in the early days of the Biden administration.

  We dive into: 

  • Why Medicaid-focused founders should think of states as 50 potential customers, not as governments
  • A few of his portfolio companies: Eleanor Health, Cityblock Health, Plume and Spark Pediatrics
  • How states can get better results from Medicaid managed care
  • The wide range of impacts from Medicaid expansion: lower medical debt and bankruptcy, increase in home ownership, and improvements in maternal, child health, cancer and cardiac outcomes
  
  

  Andy talks about the deep impact on people’s lives from having Medicaid coverage:

  “In every single study, all of those outcomes – every single one of them that are quality of life and health related – are better under Medicaid expansion. And it makes sense. If you put a little bit more money in people's pockets, put a little more security underneath them, they're going to live their lives, they are going to take that risk and take a better job, they are going to not worry as much … the kids are going to be healthier and more stable.”

  
  

  Relevant Links

  Town Hall Ventures website

  Health Affairs post showing far higher investments in Medicare- than Medicaid-focused companies 

  Medicaid facts and figures

  ASPE study estimating that 15 million people will lose Medicaid coverage with the end of continuous enrollment  

  RWJF study showing that almost two thirds of Medicaid enrollees don’t know about upcoming redeterminations

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Andy Slavitt has led many of the nation’s most important health care initiatives, serving as President Biden’s White House Senior Advisor for the COVID response, President Obama’s head of Medicare and Medicaid and overseeing the turnaround, implementation and defense of the Affordable Care Act. Slavitt is the “outsider’s insider,” serving in leading private and non-profit roles in addition to his government services. He is founder and Board Chair Emeritus of United States of Care, a national non-profit health advocacy organization as well as a founding partner of Town Hall Ventures, a healthcare firm that invests in underrepresented communities. He co-chaired a national initiative on the future of health care at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He chronicles what goes on inside the government and across the nation at town halls, in USA Today, on his award-winning podcast In the Bubble, and on twitter. He is the author of Preventable, a best-selling account of the U.S.’s coronavirus response, released in 2021. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School, he and his wife have two grown sons.

  Listen to Andy’s podcast ‘In the Bubble’

  https://lemonadamedia.com/show/inthebubble/

  Read Andy’s book ‘Preventable’

  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165/preventable

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on Twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.

  ]]>366122b3-8d0d-4879-95ef-f731d7348b73Wed, 05 Apr 2023 05:00:00 -040039:16falsefull44Pioneering Whole Person Health in California with Dr. Brad GilbertInvesting in housing for Medicaid enrollees is one of the ways Dr. Bradley Gilbert has pioneered Whole Person Health in California. He’s an original population health thinker, from his start as a county public health officer to decades of service as CEO of one of the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care plans and his most recent role as Director of Health Care Services in California. Dr. Gilbert chats with Claudia about lessons learned along the way and why we need to focus on what’s good for people, not just saving money. 

  Relevant Links

  Evaluation of IEHPs housing investment

  Overview of CalAIM

  Recent CMS guidance for states offering social supports through Medicaid managed care

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Bradley Gilbert, MD, MPP was Director of California’s Department of Health Care Services in 2020 and helped lead the state through its first response to the COVID-19 pandemic and initial implementation of CalAIM. Before that Dr. Gilbert headed the Inland Empire Health Plan, one of the largest Medicaid Managed Care plans in the nation. IEHP serves more than a million Members in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties in California. Previously Dr. Gilbert was the Public Health Officer for San Mateo and Riverside Counties. While he was CEO at IEHP Brad was board chair of the organization Claudia led, Manifest MedEx

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams or on LinkedIn.

  ]]>Investing in housing for Medicaid enrollees is one of the ways Dr. Bradley Gilbert has pioneered Whole Person Health in California. He’s an original population health thinker, from his start as a county public health officer to decades of service as CEO of one of the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care plans and his most recent role as Director of Health Care Services in California. Dr. Gilbert chats with Claudia about lessons learned along the way and why we need to focus on what’s good for people, not just saving money. 

  Relevant Links

  Evaluation of IEHPs housing investment

  Overview of CalAIM

  Recent CMS guidance for states offering social supports through Medicaid managed care

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Bradley Gilbert, MD, MPP was Director of California’s Department of Health Care Services in 2020 and helped lead the state through its first response to the COVID-19 pandemic and initial implementation of CalAIM. Before that Dr. Gilbert headed the Inland Empire Health Plan, one of the largest Medicaid Managed Care plans in the nation. IEHP serves more than a million Members in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties in California. Previously Dr. Gilbert was the Public Health Officer for San Mateo and Riverside Counties. While he was CEO at IEHP Brad was board chair of the organization Claudia led, Manifest MedEx

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams or on LinkedIn.

  ]]>b839e0b1-454c-47c5-88f9-77e266485ff6Wed, 22 Mar 2023 05:00:00 -040031:45falsefull33Health Ecosystems with Dr. Mini KahlonA move to whole person health in America is going to take a shift of the entire health ecosystem. In this episode, Claudia chats with Dr. Mini Kahlon, the founding Vice Dean of Health Ecosystem at Dell Medical School, about health beyond the clinic, the role of “traditional medical care” and medical schools in moving towards whole person health, and why we need big, visionary goals for the health of people and communities.

  Relevant Links

  Dell Medicine “health beyond the clinic” website

  Results of loneliness study conducted by Factor Health

  For more on health impact of loneliness, see this report

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Maninder “Mini” Kahlon is a founding vice dean of Dell Medical School, where she develops innovations that advance health beyond the clinic. Kahlon is an associate professor in the Department of Population Health and the founder of Factor Health. The Factor Health laboratory develops programs that rapidly improve health in people’s lives, testing them through community-based trials. Kahlon was previously the executive director and chief information officer at the University of California San Francisco’s Clinical & Translational Science Institute. She is an award-winning technology leader with experience in industry and academic medicine, building consumer-facing and research-enabling tools. Kahlon is a behavioral and systems neuroscientist. She received her Ph.D. from UCSF and is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams or on LinkedIn.

  ]]>A move to whole person health in America is going to take a shift of the entire health ecosystem. In this episode, Claudia chats with Dr. Mini Kahlon, the founding Vice Dean of Health Ecosystem at Dell Medical School, about health beyond the clinic, the role of “traditional medical care” and medical schools in moving towards whole person health, and why we need big, visionary goals for the health of people and communities.

  Relevant Links

  Dell Medicine “health beyond the clinic” website

  Results of loneliness study conducted by Factor Health

  For more on health impact of loneliness, see this report

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Maninder “Mini” Kahlon is a founding vice dean of Dell Medical School, where she develops innovations that advance health beyond the clinic. Kahlon is an associate professor in the Department of Population Health and the founder of Factor Health. The Factor Health laboratory develops programs that rapidly improve health in people’s lives, testing them through community-based trials. Kahlon was previously the executive director and chief information officer at the University of California San Francisco’s Clinical & Translational Science Institute. She is an award-winning technology leader with experience in industry and academic medicine, building consumer-facing and research-enabling tools. Kahlon is a behavioral and systems neuroscientist. She received her Ph.D. from UCSF and is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams or on LinkedIn.

  ]]>f47c6f7b-fe33-4d8c-a2ee-bd3a62919811Wed, 08 Mar 2023 05:00:00 -040034:32falsefull22Buying Health for North Carolina with Dr. Mandy CohenWhy is whole-person care so important? And, is it even possible to shift our current model in that direction? Former North Carolina Secretary of Health Dr. Mandy Cohen joins us to talk about why a shift to whole-person care is the right approach and how she generated bi-partisan support for North Carolina’s groundbreaking Healthy Opportunities Pilots which are providing food, housing and other services to Medicaid enrollees. She shares leadership lessons from COVID and perspectives on the data infrastructure states will need to support whole person health. 

  Relevant Links

  Health Affairs article: “Buying Health for North Carolinians”

  https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.01583

  Federal approval of Healthy Opportunities Pilots

  https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/section-1115-demonstrations/downloads/nc-medicaid-reform-demo-cms-approval-attachment-g-healthy-opport-pilots-eligib-services.pdf

  Kaiser issue brief on North Carolina Pilots

  https://www.kff.org/report-section/a-first-look-at-north-carolinas-section-1115-medicaid-waivers-healthy-opportunities-pilots-issue-brief/

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Mandy Cohen served as the Secretary of Health in North Carolina from 2017 to 2022, where she led the State’s COVID response and the transformation of the Medicaid Program - focusing on whole-person care and the social drivers of health. Dr. Cohen also served as the COO and Chief of Staff at CMS, helping implement the Affordable Care Act. She was recently named the EVP of Aledade Inc and the CEO of Aldade Care Solutions - scaling value-based care with doctors in charge. Dr. Cohen received her MD from Yale University School of Medicine and her Masters in Public Health from Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Cohen has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine and is an adjunct professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow Claudia on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudiawilliamshealthdata/

  ]]>Why is whole-person care so important? And, is it even possible to shift our current model in that direction? Former North Carolina Secretary of Health Dr. Mandy Cohen joins us to talk about why a shift to whole-person care is the right approach and how she generated bi-partisan support for North Carolina’s groundbreaking Healthy Opportunities Pilots which are providing food, housing and other services to Medicaid enrollees. She shares leadership lessons from COVID and perspectives on the data infrastructure states will need to support whole person health. 

  Relevant Links

  Health Affairs article: “Buying Health for North Carolinians”

  https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.01583

  Federal approval of Healthy Opportunities Pilots

  https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/section-1115-demonstrations/downloads/nc-medicaid-reform-demo-cms-approval-attachment-g-healthy-opport-pilots-eligib-services.pdf

  Kaiser issue brief on North Carolina Pilots

  https://www.kff.org/report-section/a-first-look-at-north-carolinas-section-1115-medicaid-waivers-healthy-opportunities-pilots-issue-brief/

  
  

  About Our Guest

  Dr. Mandy Cohen served as the Secretary of Health in North Carolina from 2017 to 2022, where she led the State’s COVID response and the transformation of the Medicaid Program - focusing on whole-person care and the social drivers of health. Dr. Cohen also served as the COO and Chief of Staff at CMS, helping implement the Affordable Care Act. She was recently named the EVP of Aledade Inc and the CEO of Aldade Care Solutions - scaling value-based care with doctors in charge. Dr. Cohen received her MD from Yale University School of Medicine and her Masters in Public Health from Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Cohen has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine and is an adjunct professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

  
  

  Connect With Us

  For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow Claudia on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudiawilliamshealthdata/

  ]]>c47e4952-6986-4772-bdf3-a58257739ffaWed, 22 Feb 2023 05:00:00 -040040:49falsefull11Introducing “The Other 80” with Claudia WilliamsWelcome to The Other 80 with former senior White House advisor and entrepreneur Claudia Williams. Claudia is opening a new conversation about the move to whole person health in America. Stay tuned for more.

  About our show

  The Other 80 brings you real, honest dialogue about the things that help keep people healthy beyond traditional medical care – like housing, social connections and food – and the cutting edge policies and programs supporting whole person health. Join former White House advisor, entrepreneur and host Claudia Williams for deep conversations with the innovators, implementers and policymakers bringing these new models to life. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s not and how to move towards whole person health rapidly and equitably across the US. 

  About our host

  Claudia Williams is a healthcare executive and entrepreneur who is passionate about creating the conditions, policies, systems and learning to enable health for all. Claudia was the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Manifest MedEx – one of the nation’s largest health data sharing initiatives. She served as Senior Advisor for Health Innovation and Technology at the White House under President Obama, building policies and programs for care transformation, data sharing, and precision health. Claudia is a graduate of Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, where she earned her MS degree in Health Policy and Management. Claudia served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana.

  Connect with us

  To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com.

  ]]>Welcome to The Other 80 with former senior White House advisor and entrepreneur Claudia Williams. Claudia is opening a new conversation about the move to whole person health in America. Stay tuned for more.

  About our show

  The Other 80 brings you real, honest dialogue about the things that help keep people healthy beyond traditional medical care – like housing, social connections and food – and the cutting edge policies and programs supporting whole person health. Join former White House advisor, entrepreneur and host Claudia Williams for deep conversations with the innovators, implementers and policymakers bringing these new models to life. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s not and how to move towards whole person health rapidly and equitably across the US. 

  About our host

  Claudia Williams is a healthcare executive and entrepreneur who is passionate about creating the conditions, policies, systems and learning to enable health for all. Claudia was the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Manifest MedEx – one of the nation’s largest health data sharing initiatives. She served as Senior Advisor for Health Innovation and Technology at the White House under President Obama, building policies and programs for care transformation, data sharing, and precision health. Claudia is a graduate of Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, where she earned her MS degree in Health Policy and Management. Claudia served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana.

  Connect with us

  To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com.

  ]]>e5829ddf-3dba-40fd-8773-3e090529bec8Wed, 08 Feb 2023 07:00:00 -040002:02falsetrailer