Creating a New Healthcare

It’s rare that an article title alone makes me want to stop what I’m doing and read it, but that’s what happened when I saw the title of Jess Craig’s recent article, “Why More Doctors are Billing Their Patients Like it’s the 1920’s.” In this article, and subsequently, our conversation here on the podcast, Jess explains what she means, citing the growing number of physician practices organized around the concept of direct pay. That is, the practice or physician determines a set cash price for their services and the patient pays that price out of pocket. This model may seem like we’re going backwards, to a time when health insurance didn’t exist, but in fact, it’s starting to be seen as one of the most progressive ways of managing rapidly inflating costs and concern about quality. While there are still questions around accessibility, as Jess points out, it may be one of the first advances we’ve seen in over a decade that could actually move the needle. Jess Craig is a health reporter for Straight Arrow News (SAN). Prior to joining SAN, Jess worked as an infectious disease epidemiologist and health security technical advisor for international research institutes and US government agencies, including the CDC, USDA, and USAID. Jess worked as a freelance journalist for eight years, covering science, health, and world news for various outlets. She also served as a reporting fellow for NPR in 2020 and for Vox in 2024.

With the recent explosion of GLP-1 drugs, the war on obesity seems to have taken a new and potent turn, but many are concerned about the recidivism, the side effects, and our reenergized obsession with being thin. Our guest today, Dr. Laure DeMattia, is a board certified family medicine physician and obesity specialist. For her, obesity is personal, as she has struggled her entire life with this chronic condition. In this episode, Dr. DeMattia breaks down for us how GLP-1 drugs work to hyperdrive weight loss, why that loss is rarely sustainable without long term use of the drugs, and her own philosophy outside of medication that helps her patients feel seen, heard, and safe. It’s both an educational conversation and a behind-the-curtains look at the obesity epidemic from someone on the front lines. Dr. Laure DeMattia helps women stop blaming themselves for their physiology and find lasting health for over 20 years. Her dual perspective as both a doctor and a patient makes her uniquely compassionate, challenging the myth that willpower is the solution. Author of the book, The 4 Food Cues, Dr. DeMattia hosts her own YouTube channel, Navigating Obesity with Dr. D, where she offers a compassionate, realistic viewpoint about weight and weight loss.

“It doesn’t matter what is going on in your life, nutrition is relevant.” And, at least for most Americans, getting help with their nutrition is covered by their insurance. So, why isn’t working with a dietician a normal part of every American’s care plan? Our guest today is trying to address that question. Noah Kotlove, the CEO and Co-Founder of Berry Street, went through his own nutrition journey after spending his first thirty years clinically obese. He tried every fad diet imaginable, with great success, but like many, gained all of the weight back because of the unsustainability of so much restriction. He finally found lasting change when he met with a dietician, a step recommended by his primary care provider, and, surprisingly to him, totally covered by his insurance plan. That personal experience led Noah to create Berry Street, an online, DTC nutrition therapy platform that helps clients access registered dieticians while taking the guesswork out of the payment part. In this episode, Noah shares how Berry Street works, why the relationship between dietician and client is such a critical part of success, and how they leverage information, expertise, and technology to improve the customer experience and increase the likelihood of sustainable outcomes. Noah founded Berry Street after losing 60 pounds through nutrition therapy, aiming to scale insurance-covered care through technology and change the way Americans eat. A serial entrepreneur, Noah is also the Founder of Sobrietysoft, an addiction recovery app with over 6 million users. He sees technology as a tool that allows us to get creative about outcomes over products.

“As an internist, we are always focusing on risk factors. Instead, in lifestyle medicine, we are focusing on root causes.” We’ve heard this before – nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, toxins, community – so it should be no surprise that these are also the six pillars upon which lifestyle medicine is based. The difference is that in this discipline, these six pillars are the prescription for how we deal with chronic health conditions. Our guest today, Dr. Padmaja Patel, talks about how she implements these factors into clinical medicine so that patients leave with a precise, personalized lifestyle plan. The goal? Put chronic conditions in remission. Padmaja Patel, MD, FACLM, DipABLM, CPE is a board-certified internist and nationally recognized physician leader specializing in Lifestyle Medicine, Whole-Person Health, and value-based care transformation. She currently serves as President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and Chief Medical Officer of Nudj Health, an ACLM-certified Lifestyle Treatment Program focused on scalable, evidence-based lifestyle interventions.

What if employers just stopped offering healthcare benefits to their employees? Could that happen? If the astronomical cost of healthcare keeps expanding, some employers will have no choice. That’s where our guest this week comes in. Shawn Gremminger is the President and CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions. His organization works with regional coalitions of employers to help them advance health policy, leverage their collective power, and drive market change. In this episode, we talk about some examples of what that looks like in real time and how things like direct contracting may help employers continue to offer benefits while staying in business. Known for his wide-ranging policy expertise, and government relations experience, Shawn brings to the National Alliance a successful record of working with coalitions, employers and other healthcare purchasers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders toward the mission of achieving high-quality, affordable, equitable healthcare. He began his career as a lobbyist for the Children’s Hospital Association and has since held senior leadership roles at Families USA and America’s Essential Hospitals.

Decreasing cost. It’s the Holy Grail. The thing we all know must happen in order for healthcare to become sustainable and usable for the majority of Americans. We know data analytics help. They help to identify those who are at the highest risk and who are the highest cost. But, what if we were able to look at those who are currently low cost and predict who might become high cost? Taking it one step further, could we then reach out to those folks and offer a clinical intervention built on relationship that might help prevent that high cost event from ever happening? That’s exactly the kind of model our guest today has built at Converging Health. Dr. Conard operates at the intersection of clinical medicine, advanced analytics, medical group leadership, and business strategy for early and emerging companies. He began his journey as a solo practitioner, eventually growing his medical practice to over 510 clinicians over 20 years. After the practice was acquired by a hospital system, Dr. Conard became the Chief Medical Officer for a brokerage/consulting firm and led an innovation lab focused on effective health risk reduction interventions. Currently, he is the Co-Founder of Converging Health, LLC, a technology-empowered consulting and services company. Converging Health collaborates with at-risk entities such as self-insured corporations, medical groups, accountable care organizations (ACOs) taking financial risk, and insurance captives to enhance well-being, reduce costs, and improve member experiences.

When employers look at all of the point solutions that are out there to add to their list of employee benefits, the top three should be… Primary care Primary care Primary care As a family medicine physician with an extensive background in advanced primary care, our guest today knows how true this is not just in theory, but in practice. Her work these days is getting employers to see the import of this investment as well. In her role as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Marla McLaughlin partners directly with employers to identify workforce health priorities, design targeted strategies and apply real-time clinical insights to improve outcomes. Dr. McLaughlin has dedicated her career to expanding access to high-quality primary care, guiding patients to the right care at the right time and fostering trusted patient-provider relationships. She believes the most effective healthcare combines technology with human-centric care to improve outcomes and experiences. McLaughlin brings that perspective and passion to Castlight Health and Vera Whole Health, where she plays a pivotal role in strengthening clinical operations, improving care quality and enhancing both patient and care team experiences.

“Let’s inspect what we expect.” What a powerful statement. If we expect cost transparency, let’s inspect what those costs have been to date. If we expect freedom of choice, let’s evaluate how that has worked for employees up to this point. And let’s expect an “and” approach instead of an “or” approach. As I say often these days, the devil is in the details, so it only makes sense that we put some energy and effort into inspecting what those details are and have been so we can expect what they will be in the future. That’s exactly the goal and role of today’s guest. Jeff Bak is the President of Imagine360, whose mission is to reduce health plan costs for employers, employees and their families. He has three decades of experience in managing and growing healthcare services companies. Prior to Imagine360, Jeff served as the global practice leader of the Health, Life Sciences & Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) division for Wipro Limited, and was the president and CEO of HealthPlan Holdings (HPH)—a leading healthcare solutions business.

Medicare for all. Not socialized medicine, just a single, government-run system that provides healthcare. Is it possible? Or even viable? Our guest this week on the Creating a New Healthcare podcast believes so. In fact, he sees it as the only way to ultimately address the affordability problem with healthcare, particularly for high cost conditions like cancer. In today’s episode, we talk with Dr. Troy Brennan about his book, The Transformation of American Health Insurance: On the Path to Medicare for All, and why a single payer, government system is needed, and how the changes the current administration has made to our public health systems is taking us backwards, not forward. Troyen Brennan is an Adjunct Professor at Harvard Chan School of Public Health. He was formerly the Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for CVS Health and Aetna. Before that, he was the President of the Brigham and Women’s Physician Organization and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was also Professor of Law and Public Health at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Brennan was formerly the Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has published six books and over 600 articles.

Last week, we talked about the six key drivers of personal health with Dr. Tom Frieden. But how does that factor into our conversation about the value (or not) of wearables and supplements? This week, Dr. Zeev Neuwirth and Producer, Jess Greenwood, are back to unpack that for you. We discuss the role wearables do and potentially could play in helping each one of us achieve and maintain better health. We talk about how important it is to understand that the six drivers of personal health may be simple, but they’re not necessarily easy and why that means individuals are not to blame. Most importantly, we offer an invitation. To those who are creating, supporting, or changing their own environments to support better health for themselves or their community. We want to hear from you! Please get in touch so we can share your story on the podcast.

As a society, and as an industrial complex, we’ve made health complicated…and expensive. But, epidemiology suggests that what we need to do to achieve and maintain personal health is really quite simple. Dr. Tom Frieden returns to the show to talk about the second half of his book, The Formula for Your Health. Through extensive research and review of hundreds of epidemiological studies, he distills the findings down to six basic things we need to be doing in order to be healthy. Dr. Frieden acknowledges that there is nuance, but he also affirms that history is clear. There are other societies in the world that were and are far healthier than the US population, and NOT because they had wearables, packaged food, home massagers, or Pelotons. Dr. Frieden is author of the book, The Formula for Better Health: How to Save Millions of Lives—Including Your Own. He is also the founder and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a global health organization that accelerates action against the world’s deadliest health threats. Resolve to Save Lives has worked with governments and other partners in more than 60 countries to save millions of lives. Dr. Frieden previously served as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and New York City Health Commissioner, where he led efforts that increased life expectancy by 3 years and helped end major health crises including the largest US outbreak of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, the 2014 West Africa Ebola epidemic, and responses to H1N1, Zika, and other threats.

It’s the start of a new year, and that means resolutions and recommitments to personal health and wellness. Undoubtedly, there were thousands of wearable devices purchased as presents over the holidays and many more in the post-holiday sale madness. Supplement commercials and social media ads are going strong as we start this new year. But, are these things actually necessary for health? Today, we kick off our Winter Season of Creating a New Healthcare with a deep dive into the wellness industrial complex. Jess Greenwood, Producer of the podcast, joins Host, Dr. Zeev Neuwirth to dissect what we’ve heard from the experts interviewed on the show as well as our own personal experiences. We debate the role of wearables in behavior change, the influence of the wellness industrial complex, where supplements fit into a healthy diet, and what the companies that make these products really want and need from their users. If you’ve been a bit skeptical if that Oura ring can help you achieve max readiness or even if you’re convinced those Magnesium supplements will be the game changer this year, this conversation is for you.

As we close out the year, Dr. Zeev Neuwirth steps away from his usual interviews to share a heartfelt, personal message directly with you, our listeners.

Certified Nursing Assistants. They are the lifeblood of so much of what we do in healthcare, particularly in elder care, and yet they rarely share the limelight with the doctors, surgeons, and specialists. Our guest today, Peter Murphy Lewis, is a documentary film maker who started out just trying to educate the Nebraska government on the shortage of CNAs in their state. What started as a single, 20-min documentary has turned into multiple seasons of the hit show, People Worth Caring About. The docuseries highlights the work of CNAs in nursing homes, sharing their stories in order to change perceptions about the work they do and demonstrate the value and reward of this much-needed profession. Peter Murphy Lewis is a healthcare advocate and former CNA himself. His work spans television, podcasting, and marketing, with a focus on caregiving and long-term care. Born in Kansas, Peter’s path took a dramatic — and deeply personal — turn when a health scare forced him to reassess his priorities. What followed was a journey from academia and international politics to global media, entrepreneurship, and eventually founding Strategic Pete — a platform dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs grow. Now, Peter uses his storytelling skills to challenge misconceptions about caregiving, aiming to reshape how society values care and those who provide it.

We know that healthcare is broken, but how, exactly? And why is it that nothing seems to be helping? Well, as Chris Deacon says in this honest, open interview, “Until the chassis of healthcare is rebuilt…what we put on top of it is always going to be fundamentally broken.” Chris Deacon is a legal expert, a healthcare activist, and an author. Her most recent book, The Great American Healthcare Heist: Why We’re Paying More and Getting Less seeks to demystify the broken nature in order to help the recipients of that care…us…look at the world through a different lens. She believes that the one stop gap we haven’t yet employed in our efforts to change healthcare is the power of the American people and their vote, but they have to first understand the systemic reasons why healthcare is broken. Chris Deacon is a distinguished consultant in employer-sponsored healthcare, advocating for cost-effective strategies that benefit both employers and employees. As a seasoned national speaker and a reliable source for industry publications, she stands out for her integrity and impactful content in healthcare discussions. Deacon’s tenure at the New Jersey Department of Treasury was notable for implementing cost-saving measures exceeding $3 billion, reflecting her commitment to fiscal responsibility and healthcare quality. Her leadership at VerSan Consulting, LLC is marked by innovative solutions that have significantly reduced healthcare expenditures.

See, Believe, Create. Could it be so simple? Our guest today believes so. Dr. Tom Frieden has spent his entire career working public health, and in his estimation, these three words hold the key to better health for our communities, our world, and ourselves. It’s, as he says, a formula. In our conversation, Dr. Frieden shares tangible examples of how this formula has been applied successfully, and what changes we need to make as a country and society to achieve more affordable, more effective healthcare. Author of the book, The Formula for Better Health: How to Save Millions of Lives—Including Your Own, which distills four decades of public health leadership into a clear, actionable framework to prevent unnecessary deaths, Dr. Frieden is also the founder and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a global health organization that accelerates action against the world’s deadliest health threats. Resolve to Save Lives has worked with governments and other partners in more than 60 countries to save millions of lives. Dr. Frieden previously served as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and New York City Health Commissioner, where he led efforts that increased life expectancy by 3 years and helped end major health crises including the largest US outbreak of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, the 2014 West Africa Ebola epidemic, and responses to H1N1, Zika, and other threats.

As an industry, we’ve been circling around the idea of value-based care for the past decade. But, did it ever occur to anyone to ask real people, the recipients of said care, what they thought or felt about that term? Turns out, they hate it. Through focus groups and a step-by-step methodology, Natalie Davis and her team at United States of Care are redefining value-based care and many other critical issues in healthcare. The new branding, “Patient First Care” doesn’t just come with a new logo and look; it’s the language that can help policymakers get the bills that support this financial framework passed. Imagine that…listening to people, taking their feedback seriously, and crafting legislation that reflects what matters to them. Sounds brilliant, doesn’t it? Our guest today is Natalie Davis, the co-founder and CEO of United States of Care, a nonpartisan organization working to ensure everyone has access to quality, affordable health care. She has nearly two decades of experience shaping health policy, including serving at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the rollout of historic coverage expansions. She was recently recognized as one of Washingtonian’s “500 Most Influential People of 2025”

Do you have an Apple watch? Fitbit? Oura ring? Woop? Wearables have taken over in the past decade with claims that by constantly monitoring our heart rate, sleep, respiration, and activity, they can provide health data that can change your life. But is that really possible? Or even plausible? Marco Benitez, former professional athlete, and the Founder and CEO of ROOK joins us on the Living Well series today to talk all things wearables. He sees tremendous potential with how the data these tools compile can be utilized across all aspects of our lives, including in our cars (!), to change our behavior. But he acknowledges there’s a catch. Many of these companies use the data collected not for YOUR benefit, but for theirs, and real change, well, there’s no magic bullet. It’s hard, takes time, and is all on you. Raised in Mexico with an insatiable curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit, Marco Benitez built his career at the intersection of health, technology, and sports science. Starting as a Tae Kwon Do champion, Marco’s discipline and resilience guided him into biomedical engineering, then into high-stakes roles in pharmaceutical giants like Roche and Novartis. Here, he witnessed the transformative power of data in healthcare—and saw a profound opportunity to make health metrics more accessible and actionable. Determined to improve health management and bridge the gap between raw data and real impact, Marco co-founded ROOK.

The only device we’re with every day, all the time is our phones. And yet, we often travel to outpatient clinics, pay significant copays, and engage physicians once or twice a year to run tests on our bodies. What if we could do all of that with our phone? Jason Moore, Founder and CEO of Spren, joins us on the podcast to talk about the premise behind Spren, a company that helps you turn your phone into a validated health lab. Formed out of his own challenges with gut health and gallbladder issues, Jason believes that no matter where we are on the health continuum, the process for getting closer to longevity and vitality is the same. Assess – Create a plan – Implement the plan – Reassess – Tweak the plan. It’s the microchanges, he asserts, those that are small but that consistently repeated that are most likely to get you (and him) from there…to where you want to be.

It’s always interesting when your podcast producer comes to you and says she thinks the innovations we’re featuring are sort of boring. Not exactly what you want to hear, but smart leaders take feedback like that and ask the question “Why is that?” On today’s episode of Creating a New Healthcare, I invite that same producer, Jess Greenwood, who has herself worked in and around healthcare for over 25 years to join the show and talk about why the work we’ve featured recently feels boring and how that might just be the answer to transforming healthcare. Listen in on this lively discussion and the conclusions we come to about what’s really required moving forward and why boring may just be beautiful.

On average, employers are unnecessarily wasting $4,000 per employee per year on healthcare benefits and associated costs. For a mid-size company of 100 employees, that’s $400,000! EACH YEAR! Our guest today sat on the broker side of the business and saw the waste, fraud, and abuse at every level. As he says, “It’s like working with a CPA that gets paid by the IRS.” After getting fired for being too hard on an insurance plan on behalf of his customer, Donovan had an epiphany and started Health Compass Consulting to do things the right way. Since the company’s founding in 2018, Donovan and his team have saved their customers an average of $1,856 per employee per year while often improving those employees’ healthcare options. Donovan is a leading voice on healthcare reform and strategic employee benefits management. He is the author of the new book, ‘Fixing Healthcare: How Executives Can Save Their People, Their Business, and the Economy,’ that comes out November 12th and the Validation Institute 2025 Benefits Advisor of the Year.

A Zen practice is not something we typically associate with a Washington insider and healthcare lobbyist. But, our guest today has not only made that his personal mission, but his new book, The Zen Lobbyist, makes the argument that mindfulness might be the way we truly transform healthcare. Despite the division that’s pervasive in American politics today, Gary maintains that what he calls the “mindful edge” is actually the way to cultivate unity. To lead with mindfulness means recognizing that stillness is a strategy and that compassion can actually be influence. The success of Gary’s career is its own testament to the effectiveness of these techniques. For more than three decades, Gary has worked at the intersection of policy, payer, and provider strategy, helping shape national reforms at VillageMD, Care Centrix, and PwC, while advising top policy leaders and decision-makers on bipartisan solutions for value-based care.

Despite the almost universal agreement that the United States healthcare system needs to move to value-based care, forward progress on that movement has all but stalled. Why? A big driver…no surprise…are the contracts. Brian Overstreet, the Co-Founder of Arbital Health, has built an impressive AI-powered platform that combines both an unprecedented depth of data with actuarial expertise to provide transparency in value-based care contracts, helping providers and now, payers, see where they’ve gone awry in real-time so they can course correct quickly and effectively. Brian is a serial entrepreneur with two exits in his twenty-year experience who has launched a number of successful SaaS companies in the healthcare market. He is the Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Arbital Health which was just launched in 2023 but has already undergone two rounds of funding totalling ~$46 M in investment.

How many grams of protein do you need to be healthy? What about fiber? Supplements? It feels like we’re changing our diets daily to adhere to constantly shifting recommendations and none of it is really working to optimize our health. Christopher Gardner, Professor of Medicine in Nutrition Science at Stanford University, and featured advisor on the Netflix show, “You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment”, joins us today to talk about how the industry is stacked against us and why the solution to our diet woes is as simple as beans, peas, and lentils. For more than 30 years Christopher Gardner, PhD, has studied what to consume and to avoid for optimal health, and how best to motivate individuals to achieve healthy dietary behaviors. He recently completed a two-year term serving on the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and is the past chair of the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee. He has conducted and published dozens of human nutrition intervention trials, including trials of Mediterranean, Ketogenic, Vegan, Low-Fat and Low-Carb diets and their effects on cardiometabolic health. Some of his current interests include Stealth Nutrition, Unapologetic Deliciousness and Institutional Food Settings. He is currently working on personalized nutrition explorations with several colleagues, with particular focus on the gut microbiome.

Opioid overdose is the #1 killer of 18-45 year olds in America. The crisis is not over, and we are still prescribing these addictive substances for pain management at an alarming rate with little support or anything else in the arsenal to offer. Until now… Cammie Wolf Rice, the Founder and CEO of the CWC Alliance, has pioneered a new role on the hospital healthcare team, a LifeCare Specialist. These individuals come from a variety of backgrounds, but all undergo specific training to be able to provide patients with opioid education, mental & social wellness support, and effective pain management strategies. After losing her 32 year old son, Christopher, to opioid misuse, Cammie channeled her grief into action, founding CWC Alliance in 2018 and publishing her story, The Flight: My Opioid Journey, in 2022. This approach has since been adopted in eight hospitals across the country, was selected as the subject of a Harvard Business School case study, and was named the top recommendation by Georgia’s 2024 House Study Committee on Alternatives to Opioids. Is there a LifeCare Specialist at your hospital or healthcare system?

Guest: Steve Brown, Founder and CEO, CureWise Can ChatGPT cure cancer? If you listen to the news, you would think it’s close. But ChatGPT, just like any data repository, is just one source of information. What if patients could harness the power of many of the AI engines all at once to help them ask better questions, know about the latest treatments, and become a more active player in their treatment journey? Steve Brown, Founder and CEO of CureWise, ran into this exact challenge when after years of seeking answers, he was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer. He started to explore what the AI models could tell him about his disease, the available treatments out there, and what he could be doing in his own life to minimize the effects. He found that the answers varied from model to model, but what they did do is help him become a more effective patient. He asked better questions, knew about treatments he could name to his physicians, and was able to work more collaboratively with them to find a treatment plan that would work for him, specifically. His own experience is the basis for CureWise, which is currently in beta release but will be available to the public soon. In addition to his role at CureWise, Steve also serves as the Founder and CEO of the independent film/media company Ignite Channel Inc., Chief AI Officer of Peter Diamandis’ Abundance360 and PHD Ventures and partner/Board member of AI platform SignalPop LLC. Steve is an award winning documentary film maker and directed and produced SPARK: A Burning Man Story.

Guest: Neal Shah, Co-Founder, Counterforce Health Have you ever had a medical claim denied for a procedure or service that should have been covered by your insurance? You are not alone. Yet, 99% of people choose not to appeal that denial because of the laborious, manual process required. After going through this dehumanizing experience with his wife, Neal Shah decided to bring the power of automation to the good guys. Counterforce Health is a service that helps clients leverage the speed and efficiency of AI to prepare their denial letter in literally minutes. Find out more at www.counterforcehealth.org. Neal started his career as a hedge fund manager and pivoted to healthcare after the deeply personal experience of caring for his wife during her illness. He is the Founder and CEO of CareYaya Health Technologies, a social enterprise and applied research lab advancing health equity for aging populations and is also the Founder and Chairman of Counterforce Health. He serves as Principal Investigator on multiple federally-funded innovation grants and has recently authored the book, Insured to Death: How Health Insurance Screws Over Americans – And How We Take it Back.

Deborah Ault, known to most as “Nurse Deb”, has been a Registered Nurse for over 30 years. Before getting into Care Management, her bedside nursing experience included ER, ICU, Doctor’s Office, Home Health, and Telephone Triage. Now she is the President of Ault International Medical Management (AIMM). AIMM’s team of nurses and physicians help patients navigate both the health delivery and the health insurance systems. Her passion and dedication to managed care has driven her success in the industry, saving employer-sponsored health plans countless dollars and improving the quality of patient care. During this conversation, Nurse Deb and I dive into the hidden complexities of employer-sponsored health insurance. She shares that those in the C-suite are often making “life and death decisions” for their employees by selecting inadequate health plans. Deb relays shocking examples of price gauging in healthcare and explains how her company helps employers and employees navigate this broken system. Her team’s approach of aggregating hundreds of metrics to identify high-quality, affordable care has literally saved companies and individuals hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary expenses. This is such important work, and I was particularly taken by Deb’s insistence that this type of patient advocacy requires human clinical expertise, not just technological solutions. It is the combination that is truly the secret sauce. As I tell Deb in the episode, I wish AIMM had more competition because we certainly need many more advocates like her and her team.

Obesity in America. Is there any other diagnosis as relevant, timely, or important when we think about the impact on our healthcare system? I doubt it. So, today we are talking with Dr. Meghan Garcia-Webb, who is triple board-certified in internal medicine, lifestyle medicine, and obesity medicine. Her weekly YouTube series, “Weight Medicine with Dr. Meghan,” aims to provide audiences with medically-based information about weight loss drugs and weight management. In addition to being an internist at the prestigious Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dr. Meghan runs an innovative private practice that combines concierge weight medicine with life coaching. This concept of the “one big thing” that Dr. Meghan speaks about intrigued me. She explains during our conversation that what is often missing in her work as an internist is the time to dig into what is actually blocking people from what they want. To help address this, she pursued a certification in life coaching and ultimately began her own self-pay coaching practice to add her extensive knowledge about the medicine of weight loss to the human connection that’s so critical in achieving real behavior change. The deck is seriously stacked against us. In this episode, we discuss how Americans are at war for their health and how our society is poised to prevent us from achieving and maintaining health. Dr. Meghan shares some of her own “systems” that allow her to live the life she wants without having to overthink or overdo it. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about primary care, this conversation brought back to me how much we’ve missed the boat in American healthcare when it comes to the way we treat health. It’s such a fantastic example of how we can’t medicine our way out of this problem; we must engage with the human side if we want to see real change.

Chelsea Ryckis is the award winning founder and president of Ethos Benefits, a firm dedicated to advancing health insurance strategies for employers nationwide. Their approach effectively eliminates fraud, waste and abuse from employer healthcare plans while increasing savings for both employers and their employees. Chelsea is the co-host of the Ethos Effect Podcast with her husband, Donovan, and producer of the documentary “It’s Not Personal, It’s Just Healthcare”. Chelsea regularly speaks on the industry’s most coveted stages including: ALM Benefits Pro Expo, SHRM HR Florida, and the ISCEBS Symposium. This is one of the most important episodes we’ve ever aired, especially for employers. During this conversation, Chelsea and I discuss how traditional health insurance brokers profit from ever-increasing premiums, and how that traps employers and, subsequently, employees, in a broken system. The downstream effects of astronomical health care costs will inevitably get passed down to consumers when employers are unable to absorb the increase, resulting in lost wages, layoffs, and an inability for workers to contribute to their retirement. This system is unsustainable but it does not have to operate this way. At Ethos Benefits, Chelsea and her husband, Donovan, have implemented a revolutionary approach to healthcare consulting. An approach that prioritizes transparency and fiduciary responsibility and which results in significant cost savings. Listen in as they share their methodology and how they can create a system that benefits employers and employees. Healthcare will not change until the business of healthcare does, and Ethos Benefits is paving the way.

On the show today, we are honored to have Dr. John Halamka, the Dwight and Dian Diercks president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, a digital initiative that brings together solution developers, data partners and healthcare service providers to transform healthcare. Trained in emergency medicine and medical informatics, Dr. Halamka has been developing and implementing healthcare information strategy and policy for more than 40 years. He continues to practice emergency medicine and is Professor of Emergency Medicine and the Michael D. Brennan, M.D., President’s Strategic Initiative Professor at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. Dr. Halamka has written 15 books and hundreds of articles. He and his wife run Unity Farm Sanctuary in Sherborn, Massachusetts, dedicated to the lifetime care of ill, disabled, senior, orphaned and surrendered farm animals. The work John and his team at the Mayo Clinic Platform are doing is nothing short of extraordinary. Leveraging their access to Mayo’s massive data set and employing the full breadth of AI capabilities, they have been able to create a platform that allows rapid innovation by de-identifying and sharing medical data while still protecting patient privacy. To give you a sense of the magnitude of this project – the platform currently has 250 predictive algorithms and 8 foundation models in production with a goal of impacting the health of four BILLION people by 2030. As you’ll realize by the end of this interview, Dr. John Halamka is an extraordinary individual, physician, informaticist and leader. He has a tremendous platform and influence but my hope is that his humanitarian influence expands as far, as wide, and as deep as possible within the national and international healthcare domains. If there is anyone I would trust to guide us into the future of AI in healthcare, it would be Dr. Halamka.

Our guest today is Jasmine Bhatti, the founder and CEO of Navi Nurses, a rapidly growing, private-duty nursing company that’s redefining at-home care. Navi Nurses has been recognized as one of the top startups to watch in Arizona. Jasmine herself was named Phoenix Female Founder of The Year, a Healthcare Hero of Nursing by the Phoenix Business Journal, and was the recipient of the prestigious Jeannine Rivet award from the American Nurses Association. She was also granted a $1.5 million grant to study her work through the Re-Imagining Nursing Initiative from the American Nurses Foundation. At-home care is such a salient issue for many of us these days. In fact, the inspiration for Navi Nurses came from Jasmine’s own experience with her grandmother’s cancer care journey where she recognized significant gaps in the hospital-to-home care transition. NaviNurses offers flexible nursing care, from simple one-hour check-ins to 24/7 in-home support with hospital-based nurses, often the same nurse that worked with the patient during their hospital stay. Beyond just reducing hospital readmissions, NaviNurses aims to support caregivers by quickly and accurately identifying issues so they can be addressed before they become more significant. The service is currently self-pay, but Jasmine and her team are conducting research to demonstrate the cost savings of this type of program. Beyond the obvious benefit to the patient and their family, I was intrigued by Jasmine’s data regarding the impact on the nurses themselves. Through research with their own nursing staff matched with similarly skilled hospital nurses, Jasmine found that NaviNurses report burnout on the mild end much more frequently than the hospital-based nurses. By providing a more flexible and engaged work environment that demonstrates the full value of nurses, Jasmine hopes to retain more nurses in the workforce. Jasmine’s data-based approach is both smart and admirable and her enthusiasm for this work is palpable. I look forward to seeing this model make its way across the country.  

Rob Andrews currently serves as the CEO of the Health Transformation Alliance (HTA). The HTA member companies collectively are responsible for more than 8 million employees, dependents, and retirees with an annual healthcare spend of $30+ billion. Through Andrews’ leadership, the HTA has launched value-driven solutions specifically designed to improve patient care and add economic value through world-class data and analytics, pathbreaking pharmaceutical solutions, high-quality medical networks, and robust consumer engagement initiatives. To date, the cooperative has saved its member companies well over $2 billion in healthcare costs. Prior to joining HTA, Rob served as a Member of the United States House of RepresentativesUpon his departure from Congress, President Barack Obama praised Andrews’ service as “an original author of the Affordable Care Act…and a vital partner in its passage and implementation.” In our conversation today, Rob and I revisit what feels now like an age-old argument – the move to value-based care, that is, incentivizing outcomes over the number of patients seen or services provided. What’s unique here is that for the past decade, the HTA has been working with its member constituents to demonstrate that this approach is not only economically feasible, but also better for employees and their families. Rob points out that while HTA members are certainly interested in lowering healthcare costs, their most immediate concern is employee recruitment and retention. Robust healthcare benefits packages play an important role in being able to attract and keep good talent, so members are invested in being able to provide the most competitive plans and pricing. Rob believes, and I agree, that healthcare is going to have to become less like Kmart and more like Amazon – what you want delivered in a way that’s convenient and affordable. Pulling together the collective power of these large employers is one way to nudge the market in that direction.

Susannah Fox is a highly accomplished health strategist and technologist. . 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, where she led an open data and innovation lab. She has served as the entrepreneur-in-residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and she directed the health portfolio at the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project. As someone who firmly believes that we all have to become rebels when it comes to our own health and healthcare, I was excited to talk with Susannah about her new book. In this episode, we discuss how real rebels are creators, not just passive consumers. Susannah feels strongly, and I agree, that the revolution we need in healthcare should be one where patients and caregivers take an active role in research, treatment, and innovation. She brilliantly identifies four key archetypes that can help guide this patient-led change. These roles remind us that we can all be actors in bettering our own experience of healthcare and the experiences of those we love. As Susannah so aptly says, “Don’t bury your light.” Susannah’s message is one of hope, empowerment, and positive action.. I encourage you to listen and proudly take on the role of rebel in your healthcare.

Dr. Farzad Mostashari is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aledade. He has spent his career at the forefront of healthcare policy and health information technology. Dr. Mostashari is the former National Coordinator for Health IT at the Department of Health and Human Services, and served as a distinguished expert at the Brookings Institute’s Engelberg Center for HealthCare Reform. In addition to his work at Aledade, Dr. Mostashari is the chair of the board of directors for Resolve to Save Lives – a global health organization that aims to save millions of lives from cardiovascular disease and infectious disease epidemics. He has spoken and written extensively on issues affecting health IT, ACOs, and health care policy and delivery with publications in the New York Times, the Journal of American Medical Association, and Health Affairs, among others. Dr. Mostashari received his MD from Yale University School of Medicine and his Masters in Population Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. With such an esteemed background across so many different sectors, I was excited to talk with Farzad not only about his work with Aledade, but also his take on the larger challenge of primary care in this country. In this episode, we discuss the following: The fundamental problem in the healthcare system, namely misaligned financial incentives that do not deliver the desired outcomes. How bringing primary care providers together in a different business model creates shared accountability for the total cost and quality of care while resulting in substantial savings across all invested parties. The use of proprietary technology platforms to integrate data, make predictions, and surface insights to help practices identify and care for their most vulnerable patients. One of the things I most respect about Farzad’s approach is that he values outcome measures that make a real difference in patient lives – decreasing hospital admissions, improving clinical outcomes, enhancing patient experience and engagement. And the results speak for themselves – $800 million in Medicare savings and $548 million in savings shared across their provider groups! Farzad is an intensely outcomes driven, accomplished leader, and Adelade demonstrates the powerful potential of a value-based care platform. This is a wonderful example of creating a new healthcare. To find out more about Aledade’s services, please visit them at www.aledade.com.

With years of experience as a PR strategist for healthcare technology companies, Erica Olenski has spent her career working at the intersection of innovation and care. From guiding early-stage startups to consulting with multinational organizations, she developed a unique understanding of how to best use technology to improve healthcare. Her expertise in healthcare, however, extends far beyond her professional roles. As the primary caregiver to her son—a resilient survivor of brain cancer and stroke—Erica has firsthand experience with the challenges patients and caregivers face in today’s healthcare system. In this profound conversation, Erica shares the heart-wrenching story of her son’s diagnosis and how her family was thrown into an enduring and complicated relationship with the healthcare system literally overnight. I was so struck by how much Erica relied on the health and resilience she built before her son’s diagnosis to help her survive this experience. We talk about the potential impact of pointing primary care in the direction of helping all people achieve that armor in order to better face life’s inevitable struggles. Erica and I also reflect on the significant gaps in hospital environments when it comes to accommodating the needs of caregivers, and the opportunities to reimagine these spaces to better support both patients and their families. There are so many takeaways from this interview, some disheartening and frustrating and some just purely inspiring. Throughout our conversation, Erica emphasized the importance of surrender, acceptance, and the power of positive narratives. Her idiom “Words are magic” is something I now repeat to myself daily, a salient reminder that we have the opportunity to shape our own reality even in the midst of tragedy. * To find out more about August’s Artists, please go to https://www.augustsartists.org/

Our guest today is David Johnson, CEO of 4sight Health and author of the new book, The Coming Healthcare Revolution: 10 Forces that Will Cure America’s Health Crisis. Prior to starting 4sight, a think tank promoting market-driven healthcare reform, Dave spent 28 years of his career in healthcare investment banking. This background and his Harvard public policy experience give him the unique ability to provide commentary on the nuances of healthcare, which he does so in an almost prophetic way in this landmark book. There is a reason we are kicking off the 2025 season of Creating a New Healthcare with his insights. Where did the idea of revolution come from? Building on the realizations from his first two books*, Dave realized that there can’t be an incremental fix to US healthcare. It has to be exponential, so we, as consumers, shouldn’t be looking for evolutionary change. We should demand revolutionary change. In our conversation, Dave describes the post-revolution system as “democratized and decentralized distribution of whole person health.” He goes on to explain that the two movements needed to get us to that end goal are care redesign and care migration – basically, care that integrates the whole person and can be delivered in the patient’s home, community, or location of choice. Add to that the advantage of aggregators, organizations that put all of the pieces together in a way that makes it easier for consumers to access. And finally, empowering caregivers to harness and realize their full potential. The shift to this new reality has been happening gradually for the past decade, but Dave feels like gradually is about to shift to suddenly. Much of Dave’s work echoes my own feelings expressed both in Reframing Healthcare and, most notably, in Beyond the Walls. But I can’t say that I have been as convinced that the revolution is imminent. Talking with Dave gives me hope that it’s just over the horizon. That’s how I’d like to start this year…with hope. * Dave is also the author of Market vs. Medicine: America’s Epic Fight for Better, Affordable Healthcare (2016) and The Customer Revolution in Healthcare: Delivering Kinder, Smarter, Affordable Care of All (2019)

This is the last episode of our Fall 2024 Season, and it’s a powerful one. On the show today is Andrew Molosky, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Chapters Health System. Under Andrew’s leadership, Chapters has redefined its position to become the nation’s largest not-for-profit, end-of-life care organization and a leading community-based, population-health organization. Andrew has served in executive leadership positions for over 20 years. He is a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives, a Home Care 100 advisory board member, and on the board of directors for the National Partnership for Hospice and Health Innovation. When Andrew told me Chapter’s motto, “There are only two jobs here – taking care of patients or taking care of those that do,” I couldn’t help but think if every healthcare organization adopted this, we would be light-years ahead of where we are now. What a powerful north-star. Examples of how this motto drives their business include: Solving for the disease state first and then finding appropriate payment models. Prioritizing building a workforce that is scalable, adaptive, and responsive to new and innovative ideas – including the social determinants of health. An explicit focus on longitudinal care, that is, staying with patients throughout their journey. Andrew even coins a new term for this…longevically. Utilizing outcome metrics that measure what’s meaningful to patients and their families, like ‘days-at-home’. Chapters and their technology subsidiary, CareNu, have been flying a bit under the radar until now, but that’s been on purpose. Andrew knows they’ve created something special. That is evident in his response when asked what problem he’s solving today: “Throttle control.” It would be easy to let this train run full steam ahead, but Andrew’s understanding of the need to balance their “yes” with equally strategic “no” underlies his tremendous leadership. This is an organization to watch and learn from. To find out more, visit https://www.chaptershealth.org/

“… If it’s garbage in, it’s gonna be garbage out.” Boy, am I familiar with that truth. And it prevails across so many areas of healthcare, but maybe none more so than the data we generate and our ability to distill something useful and usable out of that data. On this episode of Creating a New Healthcare, I talk with Dr. Mitesh Rao, the Founder and CEO of OMNY Health. Dr. Rao is a Board-Certified Emergency Medicine Physician and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Stanford. He founded OMNY to revolutionize how healthcare organizations collaborate and advance science through the common language of data. Integrating real-world data from direct partnerships with IDNs, AMCs, specialty networks, and other providers across the US, OMNY Health’s proprietary platform provides the foundation for stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem to compliantly and efficiently share data, as well as pursue broader data-driven partnerships. The core themes seem simple but are somehow still roadblocks: Healthcare data is critical for driving innovation, quality improvement, and better patient care, but the industry has historically struggled with accessing and using data effectively. Healthcare data is often siloed within individual provider organizations or systems, hindering collaboration between different healthcare stakeholders who could benefit from sharing and analyzing the data together. Even when data can be accessed, it is often not in a clean, standardized, or usable format for research or it does not meet regulatory requirements. The available data does not adequately represent the full diversity of the patient population, limiting the ability to conduct inclusive research and develop equitable care solutions. Dr. Rao and his colleagues at OMNY are working to combat these challenges by scaling the harmonization of healthcare data across providers, payers, and other stakeholders to create a platform built specifically for collaboration and innovation. It’s a noble goal and one that could prove critically useful in advancing equity, improving patient safety, and powering research on new care pathways and treatment approaches. But the roadblocks won’t disappear on their own, so there’s definitely more work to do.

On the show today is Mike Murphy, a distinguished growth leader with over 30 years experience as a C-level executive, specializing in healthcare and insurance. Mike’s expertise spans M&A due diligence, post-merger integration, and turnaround strategies, consistently improving earnings and gross profit. Examples of some of his significant achievements include propelling a new insurance division from a cold start to $435M in revenues and $22M in EBITDA in four years and guiding successful product launches, most notably UnitedHealthcare’s inaugural national dental product portfolio. His leadership, strategic acumen, and deep industry knowledge make him a transformative force in high-performance teams and change management. Our conversation took a lot of twists and turns today, but in Mike’s words, here’s the 30,000 foot view. We covered the following: Mike’s take on the current state of the healthcare system, the powers that are keeping us entrenched in a “sick care” system, and the revolution that’s coming. When looking at how to succeed in the business of healthcare, the importance of asking the right questions and trusting cognitive dissonance instead of pushing through it. Why leadership must create an environment where everyone, at all levels, feels valued and heard. How to adapt to a changing business environment where capital is hard to come by and point solution fatigue is real. The fatal flaw of the “Divine Right of Kings” mentality in leadership. I so enjoyed talking to Mike. His approach is down-to-earth, practical, and incredibly humanistic. There are so many organizations in healthcare today that could benefit from “looking under the hood”, as Mike says, ask the tough questions, and then crowd source the solutions from all levels of the organization, not just the C-suite. This is a must-listen episode about the current business of healthcare from someone who’s seen it from all sides.

When your guest starts a business in healthcare with the adage “Go where the competition isn’t”, you know it’s going to be an interesting conversation. On the podcast today, I’m honored to have Dan McDonald, Founder and CEO of 86Borders and Lauren Barca, VP of Quality for 86Borders. Dan co-founded the company in 2014 with a clear mission: to revolutionize communication dynamics within and beyond corporate confines. By 2018, he catalyzed a strategic pivot, channeling the company’s energy exclusively into healthcare. As a former nurse, Lauren is deeply passionate about enhancing the quality of care for economically disadvantaged and medically underserved populations, a passion reflected in the “empathy first” model they use to train care coordinators. 86Borders works with health plans to offer a service and a SaaS platform that puts the member at the center of the healthcare ecosystem. Their platform logs every encounter with a member, and connects members with the same care coordinator every time so that a trusting relationship can be built. Care coordinators help address social determinants of health to remove the day-to-day barriers that get in the way of preventive care and chronic care management. With this model, 86Borders is highly successful at improving quality metrics like medication adherence and reducing expensive healthcare utilization like ER or urgent care visits for the health plan, but they prioritize an even more important outcome. Human-to-human connection. This type of service is invaluable for our most under-resourced populations, but it is not only their work that has me so impressed. It is also their approach to leadership. It’s clear that Dan and Lauren care not only about the wellbeing of their members, but also about the wellbeing of their team. That is the type of humanistic leadership we need more of. To find out more, visit https://www.86borders.com/

Zack Cooper is a health economist whose work is focused on producing data-driven scholarship that can inform public policy. He currently serves as an Associate Professor of Public Health and Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University in addition to being the Director of Health Policy at Yale’s Tobin Center for Economic Policy. Zack’s research has been published in leading economics and medical journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the White House, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services. My first reaction after reading Zack’s most recent article, “Who Pays for Rising Healthcare Prices?: Evidence from Hospital Mergers”, was – how is this information not all over the news?? Most people are aware of the untenable costs of healthcare but I doubt anyone is aware of what’s revealed in this most recent study. Zack first points out that the biggest driver of rising healthcare costs is increasing hospital prices. But then he goes on to discuss that when hospital prices rise, it leads to higher insurance premiums for local employers. Employers then have to either reduce wages or lay off workers, and those most likely to be affected are those making the least. This conversation highlights the stark contrast between the healthcare experience of those earning well over $100,000 compared to the majority of working Americans. I suspect that most healthcare executives are insulated from the real-world impacts of high healthcare costs on working families. We must do better. And that starts with being fully educated on the topic, so please join us for this enlightening and critically important conversation.

Our guest today is Naama Stauber Breckler, Co-Founder and CEO of Better Health, a medical supply and support platform that bundles peer coaching, education, and delivery of medical supplies to help people manage their chronic conditions at home. Naama is a true humanistic rebel leader dedicating her entire entrepreneurial journey to creating human-centric solutions that cater to underserved populations. Naama started her career as a software engineer in the Israeli military. She holds an MBA from Stanford GSB and a B.Sc in computer science from MTA, Israel. Better Health is a fascinating model that pairs something we typically see as mundane and transactional, the acquisition of medical supplies for patients with chronic conditions, with a real opportunity to connect with them on a personal and humanistic level. Through their services, Better Health aims to: Connect patients with peer support specialists who have lived experience with the same conditions to provide emotional support, education, and help with self-management. Simplify the process of obtaining the right medical supplies and devices, and manage insurance and payment. Coordinate with healthcare providers and payers to ensure patients receive the necessary care and support. Work to address social determinants of health, such as food insecurity, that can impact patients with chronic conditions. Aim to improve health outcomes, reduce unnecessary ER visits and hospitalizations, and enhance overall quality of life for their members. During our discussion, we talk about real-life examples of how the peer-to-peer relationships built into their model have helped members identify ways to utilize certain or different medical supplies to not only improve their health, but also their quality of life. As with many of the #HRL’s we talk with, Naama’s personal and familial story of resilience has served as a guiding light in her work. She graciously shares the story of her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, and how she risked her life to help others. Better Health and Naama herself are such pivotal examples of how we have an opportunity to humanize every aspect of healthcare, even down to medical supplies. I encourage you to take a listen. I promise you will be inspired by this story. To find out more about Better Health, please visit their website at www.joinbetter.com.

Our expert guest on this episode is Brian Esterly, who was appointed CEO of TimeDoc Health in August 2023. Brian brings more than 25 years of healthcare leadership experience to this role. Prior to this he served as the Chief Growth and Strategy officer at Centria Healthcare. Working with healthcare systems, primary care providers, FQHC’s and Medicare Advantage plans, TimeDoc Health provides virtual care management services primarily targeting the Medicare population. Their three main services include: Chronic Care Management Remote patient monitoring Behavioral health integration During our discussion, Brian made it clear that TimeDoc Health serves as a seamless extension of the primary care provider and their team. In that role, however, they can help address some major challenges within our healthcare system. Brian shares some examples of how they provide chronic care management and behavioral healthcare services in between provider appointments, relieving the provider group from having to manage that in-between visit care. Additionally, by screening for and addressing quality care gaps and social determinants of health gaps, their services improve patient care outcomes. Finally, their outcome data suggests utilization of TimeDoc reduces ED visits and readmissions, thereby improving quality scores, and providing health insurers and Medicare Advantage plans with the opportunity to improve their STARS ratings. From a patient care perspective, chronic disease management, particularly for our older Americans, is a growing challenge, especially as the number of primary care providers continues to decline. Services like TimeDoc Health could literally be a lifeline to address some of the most common and insipid conditions plaguing Seniors. To find out more about TimeDoc’s services, please visit their website at https://timedochealth.com/.  

Ann Somers is the Director of Health Care at the Clayton Christensen Institute. Her research focuses on drivers of health (a.k.a. social determinants of health), maternal health, and the pathways to improve them. Ann Somers holds an MSPH in Health Policy and Management from UNC-Chapel Hill and a BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia. Last year, she authored a report for the Clayton Christensen Institute on the state of maternal health in the United States. The full report can be found here. In our discussion today, Ann Somers talks about the alarming findings from that report including the systemic barriers that are contributing to poor maternal health outcomes. She explains the need for a shift from viewing maternal health as an individual problem to a systemic issue that requires collective solutions, rather than relying on individual self-care or asking for help. Our focus with this podcast is both to bring awareness to important topics like this, but also to offer tangible, real ways that we can address the problem. So what can we do? Ann Somers explains the potential for employers to play a significant role in creating supportive systems and policies for working mothers, such as flexible work hours, shortened work weeks, and on-site childcare. But more globally, she impresses on us that we must catalyze a societal shift towards a culture of respect for caregiving that will push the implementation and standardization of policies that support working mothers and other caregivers. Mothers are the backbone of our families, communities, and societies. And yet, we are not putting our money, resources, or attention towards supporting them. This issue needs to be discussed broadly, and the solutions Ann Somers shares need to be funded and deployed. Addition: Recently, the U.S. Surgeon General published a report entitled Parents Under Pressure talking about the Mental Health and Well-Being of parents in the United States. We asked Ann Somers to comment on their findings and recommendations. Her thoughts are also included in this episode. A full version of the report can be found here. Resources: Moms First Chamber of Mothers