The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

LGBTQIA+ people face worse health outcomes in our country due to a long history of oppression and discrimination. In this episode, Dr. Mitchell Lunn, an openly gay physician and researcher at Stanford in the field of sexual and gender minority populations (SGM), explains what health equity means for SGM people, and what each of us can do to be a better ally.

Follow Dr. Mitchell Lunn on Twitter

Learn more about the Pride Study

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In this episode, I talk to my-cofounder Lauren Makler as we debut what we’ve been building for over a year: a destigmatized, scalable approach to egg freezing and donation. Cofertility is a fertility ecosystem that enables women to freeze their eggs *for free* when they donate half of the eggs to a family that otherwise can’t conceive.

Learn more at Cofertility.com

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In a controversial decision, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are entitled to the same legal protections as children. This bombshell ruling has sent shockwaves through the healthcare community. I'll break down the legal arguments, unpack the implications for IVF clinics and families, and discuss the chilling potential impact on reproductive healthcare across the US. With Roe v. Wade overturned and legal "personhood" being granted to embryos, the future of fertility treatments hangs in the balance.

Go to https://fightforfamilies.resolve.org/ to learn how to take action and fight for families.

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In this episode, Christine Lemke, co-founder and CEO of Evidation Health, shares how her personal struggles with chronic pain fueled her mission to transform how we measure and improve health outcomes. She shares the company's evolution and innovative approach to generating real-world evidence (RWE) using a global research platform serving millions of people.

We cover:

The power of real-world data and understanding health outside the clinic

Lessons from pivots: Evidation's journey to its current focus

How they recruit diverse participants, prioritize consent, and even compensate individuals

Accelerating research and making it more representative of the populations drugs will actually serve

Where the company's unique data platform goes next, and how it could change healthcare

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Women make 80% of healthcare decisions and outspend men two to one on care—yet when it comes to designing, funding, and scaling health tech, they’re still treated like a niche.

In this episode, we break down the broken flywheel holding women’s health innovation back including fewer growth-stage investments, limited exits, and a system not built to serve women as the primary users of care. I’m joined by Carolyn Witte, co-founder of Tia, and Katie Drasser, CEO of Rock Health, to talk about what needs to change—and how we get there.

We cover:

📱 What Rock Health’s latest report says about women as digital health consumers

🚫 Why men shouldn’t be the benchmark for women’s health

💸 How women’s health companies struggle to raise beyond Series A (and what to do about it)

👩‍⚕️ Why every company should be a women’s health company

💡 What founders and investors need to do differently to unlock women’s health at scale

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About our guests:

Katie Drasser is CEO of RockHealth.org, leading a team of experts in health equity, social enterprise, and design to encourage more equitable innovation in digital health. Drasser has launched programs that address complex global issues with a focus on public health innovation and the role of innovative financing and leadership in systems change. Previously, she curated health content for the Aspen Ideas Festival and was managing director of the Aspen Global Innovators Group, steering global leadership programs to address poverty alleviation and human rights. Drasser has worked internationally on HIV/AIDS treatment strategies in Romania, private health services delivery in Myanmar, and the scale up of Kenya’s national emergency medical system. She designed a network of charter schools and developed Good Capital, a venture fund that invests in social enterprises like the Hub Bay Area and the Social Capital Markets Conference.

Carolyn Witte is a visionary healthcare entrepreneur dedicated to creating a personalized, preventive, and human-centered healthcare system. As the founding CEO of Tia — the leading tech-enabled primary care provider for women — she pioneered a new model of “whole-women’s” healthcare, integrating virtual and retail-style clinics, technology, and a multidisciplinary care teams to transform the business and experience of going to the doctor. A former strategist at Google’s Creative Lab, Carolyn brings an interdisciplinary approach to healthcare innovation through design, technology, and brand. Her latest passion project is The XX Factor — a newsletter and community advancing the women’s health category through hard won lessons, shared learnings and collective action. She’s been recognized by Fast Company, Forbes, and Inc. Magazine as a trailblazer for women in business.

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Show notes:

• Women in focus: understanding women as digital health consumers (Rock Health)
• There’s a Growth-Stage Cliff Plaguing Women’s Health Startups

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