- 5 weeks ago
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Okay, hello everyone and welcome. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Joel Bravel.
00:10I'm a fourth-year medical student at Washington State University. I'm a Ghanaian-American,
00:14but I'm better known online as the medical mythbuster for talking about health inequities
00:18in medicine, healthcare disparities, and the ways that we in our community can better our
00:22health for all of us. But really what I'm excited about today is to moderate this incredible panel
00:27with some absolutely stunning and amazing innovators that are doing amazing work in heart health.
00:33But first, I want to say thank you so much to the American Medical Association and the New Voices
00:37Foundation for asking me to do this panel and for having us here. The American Medical Association
00:44has been working on Release the Pressure. It's a campaign that seeks to advance equitable opportunities
00:50to invest in heart health innovation and solution development. We're prioritizing investment
00:56in health innovation in programs developed by, with, and for the black community as you can see up here
01:02by these incredible entrepreneurs. And really what Release the Pressure is about is it's about
01:07empowering the black community by providing access to resources and support that are needed to adopt a
01:13heart-healthy lifestyle. So the health innovators that you see here today on stage exemplify that mission
01:21of the Release the Pressure campaign. And through their work they're designing creative and effective
01:25solutions to heart health and looking at disparities in a new way by using different tools, new tech, and of
01:32course new talent as well. So I'm excited to introduce to you an incredible group of powerful entrepreneurs.
01:38But I think as an entrepreneur you all have gotten good at giving your one-minute pitch. It's like the best way to
01:43talk about it is to have you guys do it. So we'll start right over here with Crystal and then we'll just work our way down.
01:48Why don't you tell us your name, what your company is doing in its name, and the booth people can find
01:53you at. Hi, my name is Crystal Dobson. I am CEO and founder of Cardiac Fit. Cardiac Fit is a telehealth
02:01solution that is a marriage between health care and fitness and we offer low-cost alternatives to
02:07a preventive health care. Our mission is to tackle the traditional health care barriers seen within
02:12the health care system which includes access to quality care, engagement of underserved communities,
02:18and cost. The problem is 30 million people have cardiovascular disease with black Americans have
02:2554 percent they're more likely to die from CBD and so Cardiac Fit aims to change that. Thank you. It's a
02:31pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Ashley? Hi everyone, my name is Ashley Wisdom. I'm the founder and CEO of
02:38Health and Hurt U which is a digital health platform focused on connecting black women to culturally
02:43sensitive and black health care providers as well as educational health content and community support.
02:49And you can find us at boot 7310 and we're raffling off tickets to see Usher tomorrow so come on over.
02:55Did y'all hear that? Ushering off tickets to see Usher so make sure you hit that booth. Go ahead, Jackie.
03:02I don't have Ashley on that one but I'm gonna have to go to that raffle. But hello everyone. My name
03:07is Jennifer Ja'Kai Johnson. I'm the founder and CEO of Wellness. Wellness is a trauma-informed
03:14digital care clinic that provides integrative medicine to trauma. It was built after the
03:19unexpected passing of my son. When he passed, I ended up having broken heart syndrome, leaky heart valve,
03:26PTSD, anxiety, and ultimately I just needed more than mental health care. So I searched for care
03:33and came up with integrative medicine in terms of having different clinicians to work on different
03:37parts of the journey. And so that's what we do at Wellness. Come check us out at Booth 7306
03:43where you can learn more about integrative medicine and heart health. Amazing. Stark? Good afternoon. I am
03:49Star Cunningham, the founder and CEO of 4D Healthware. We are at Booth 7308. Please come by and check us
03:57out. We also don't have Usher tickets but we're close to them. So come check us out. At 4D Healthware,
04:03we are a virtual care company that is culturally competent. So we put devices in the home that manage
04:10you, monitor you. If a blood pressure goes up or if you need any type of support, we are also connected
04:17to clinicians, doctors, nurses, community health workers, social workers to support you and wrap
04:24around health care. Thank you so much for having me today. Hey everybody, my name is Kwame Tara. I'm
04:31the founder and CEO of Bear Health. Before I do my spiel, I want to ask everybody a question. Raise your hand
04:36if you know your credit score. Most people here. Now raise your hand if you know your health score.
04:42Good. A few people, right? So our app, Balanced by Bear, is kind of like Credit Karma but for your
04:47health. Everybody gets a score between 0 and 1,000 that represents your overall health. So,
04:52and it changes in real time. So if you go on a run one day, your score goes up a few points. If you get
04:56three hours of sleep one night, the score goes down. Based on those changes, we provide real-time feedback,
05:01right? You can improve as well as help you connect with health care resources as well. Last month on our app,
05:07our medical advisor took one million steps. And in that journey, he lost 20 pounds and came off
05:14blood pressure medication. And so we launched the challenge for Essence Fest where we take 10,000
05:19steps on our app. At any point during the weekend, you're in for a chance to win $500. So come find us
05:25at booth 7111 for a chance to win and learn more about what we're doing. Amazing. So as you can hear,
05:31each of these entrepreneurs are doing incredible work in the healthcare space, advancing heart health.
05:36And we're going to be doing something a little bit different today for this panel. I'm not going
05:39to be just asking questions. Instead, we have a little game. We have these slips of paper over here.
05:44They all have a word that's written on it. We're going to ask the panelists to pick one of these out
05:48and say whatever topic comes kind of first to mind related to their specific business. And we're going
05:55to start all the way on the left side with Kwame over there. So Kwame, I'll have you pick one out.
06:01And I may follow up with some questions.
06:03So I got the word team, just anything that comes to mind as it relates to my business.
06:10Exactly.
06:12So I'll say as an early stage company, the most important thing that investors or grant
06:17writers or funders of any form are looking for is your team. So how qualified are you to do what
06:24you're doing? How dedicated are you to the work that you're committed to? And are you guys going to
06:30be attractive long term to investors to be able to get people to come and work behind you?
06:35I think one way that I've shown that with my company is we started an internship at Xavier
06:39University, Louisiana, where I invite students to have the chance to earn equity as well as cash
06:44in the startup in an effort to give them opportunity and exposure to what it means to be a part of this
06:50early stage company. And our vision is to actually create 20 millionaires, student millionaires,
06:55through working with Bear. I absolutely love that. And just a follow up question. How did you go about
07:00finding your team when you first started out? Because I think for every entrepreneur,
07:03it's going from that solo to actually having a team behind you to build out your vision. How'd you do
07:07that? Yeah, I mean, I tried to keep it relatively organic, right? So I mean, one way I did for the
07:12internship was I posted on social media. And then a lot of students decided to come, you know, look for
07:17internship programs, looking for put things on their resume. And so that was relatively easy. But
07:22outside of that, I just show up everywhere in the health and wellness space, tell people about what
07:26I'm doing. Our medical advisor, Dr. Griggs, we started working together because I was filming a
07:31panel that he was speaking on, and shared the content with him. And he fell in love with what
07:36we're doing. And it's, you know, transformed his life in many ways. And he's now become a champion for
07:40what we do. So different different ways to build the team. But I like it when it's when it's organic.
07:44Love that. And hopefully out of that, you heard that you could you hear if you're interested in one of
07:49these companies, come up, talk to someone who knows, maybe it's your future business that you're
07:52working with over here. Okay, I'm gonna mix things up a little bit. Chris, we're gonna go to you. So
07:59I got policy. So policy within the healthcare environment is so important. One thing that
08:06holds clear, especially when you're working with underserved communities, which is what we work with,
08:11and standing business, but working with the African American community,
08:15is access to quality care, engagement of underserved communities, and equity.
08:22And it's important for us to advocate for policies that support these types of things,
08:27because there's so many people that don't have access to quality care,
08:32access to quality cardiac care that looks just like us. So cardiac supports this. We are in Texas,
08:39we're in Dallas, and our congresswoman is Jasmine Crockett. And so we have a powerful woman that we can
08:48go to that supports us with NIH grants for creating technology just like what cardiac fit is built on
08:56to increase innovation that's going to increase access to rural populations and underserved populations.
09:02So thank you so much. Absolutely love that. And shout out to Jasmine Crockett. She's incredible for the work she's doing.
09:08Yeah, shout out to that. Congresswoman Crockett. I have a question about how do you go about finding
09:11those grants? I mean, policy is one thing, right? Finding federal grants is another. How do you actually
09:15go about finding those grants and making sure that it's advancing whatever policies that an administration's
09:20going about and making sure that stakeholders understand what's at stake for the black community?
09:24That's a really good question. NIH and SBIR grants are not something that we actively know about. So we
09:38did a lot of background education and research to really understand what the NIH is looking for. And so
09:44they're looking for ways to actually improve our health, improve health in the underserved populations.
09:50And the COVID-19 was a big part of that. COVID-19 actually showed that the African-American
09:58communities don't have access to quality care. And we have a lot of comorbidities that cause us to have
10:03increase in death for COVID-19. So you can actually go to the NIH. You can find a whole lot of grants that
10:10actually can support some of your innovations. And the SBIR is one of them. So we have two out there
10:15where we're looking at AI, artificial intelligence, and really predicting CBD within our community,
10:24and an innovation platform that we are presenting that's going to create a healthcare environment
10:29for our community. So we're really excited about that. Love it. Thank you for all that work that you're
10:33doing. Ashley, feel free to choose. Disruption. Okay. So in tech, the word disruption is a very
10:45overused word at times. I think when innovators are building in the healthcare space, because our
10:51healthcare system is so complicated, and to put it frank, it's very broken, it's really hard to frankly
10:58disrupt healthcare when you're innovating. We have to create a new healthcare system. We can't just
11:04build new solutions on top of a fundamentally flawed healthcare system. So when I think about the
11:09disruption of healthcare, I think about policy. I think about challenging institutional racism.
11:15And I also think about, as innovators, us building together collectively and not building in silos.
11:21As, you know, entrepreneurs who are building capital, sometimes capitalism will make us feel like we
11:25need to only be competitive. But in order to actually disrupt healthcare, we need to be building
11:30solutions together and not in silos. Absolutely. Ashley, I've had the chance to interview you about
11:36you being a disrupter, especially with Health in Our Hue. Can you tell us a little bit about how you think
11:40it's being a disrupter right now? And if not yet, where do you see the biggest disruptions happening
11:46for Health in Our Hue in general for the healthcare system? So one way I'll say that we have been
11:51disrupting healthcare has been with our provider directory. So we have a directory to make it
11:56easier for black women and women of color to find providers who look like us, as well as providers
12:02who may not look like us, but are committed to providing affirming and safe care to black women. And one
12:07of the ways that we do that on our platform is that we allow our members to filter for providers based
12:12on race and ethnicity. And so I've talked to health insurance companies and I've pitched Health in Our Hue
12:16and they're like, this is great. And then they try to go and do it themselves. And they realize,
12:20we actually don't have the race and ethnicity data on many of our providers. And so, and because they
12:26didn't think that it was something that was important for patients to know when they're looking
12:30for a provider, but we know as black people, we tend to want to be seen by a provider who looks like us,
12:35who knows our lived experience. And so we've added that capability on our platform because we know
12:40that that's what black patients want. And, but because of that now we have health systems and health
12:45insurance companies who are starting to think about ways that they can build features and capabilities to
12:49better serve their black members and patients. Absolutely. That's true disruption right there.
12:55Thank you. Okay.
13:03Mark it. Okay. So this is the data, right? One in two women will experience at least one or multiple
13:11traumatic experiences in her lifetime. However, for black and brown women, eight out of 10 of us will
13:18experience some form of trauma and 50% of black women over the age of 20 have some sort of cardiovascular
13:25disease. So there's a huge market around understanding that we need to address our trauma.
13:32Eight out of 10 of the leading causes of death are associated with unaddressed trauma. So trauma causes
13:41stress, stress causes information, information causes chronic conditions. So this is a big market,
13:47but that's unsettling because there is a big market, right? That means we need to be taking better
13:52care of ourselves. We're looking at our heart health because all of that is connected as well
13:58to trauma and what we go through. So I think for us, it's just understanding how big the market is,
14:04but looking at the best ways to address it. So for us, it was looking at three things. We wanted to make
14:09sure we provided her with whole person integrative trauma care. So when she comes to us, she gets a
14:15integrative doctor. She gets a trauma focused therapist and a coach. She gets an integrative
14:20registered dietitian nutritionist. She gets a yoga therapist and a naturopathic educator and a personal
14:27care coordinator on her journey. That was the first thing. The second thing, she wanted to have specialized
14:32therapists who were trained deeply in trauma and grief. They're what I call generalist therapists,
14:39but trauma is a specialty. You have to be deeply trained in trauma. And so we focused on making
14:45sure our clinicians, our therapists were trained. They came in with certain trainings, but then we go on
14:49top of that and we invest in some more trainings. The last thing was culturally competency and making
14:55sure it was covered by insurance. We make sure that now we're in network with Aetna, Aetna Medicare. We work
15:01with the Victims Compensation Fund. So if you're a victim of homicide, domestic violence, human
15:06trafficking, intimate partner violence, the state can pay us to service our medical and therapy needs.
15:13So those are the main focuses. It's a big market, but we're working slowly one woman by one woman.
15:22I absolutely love that and that you're looking at holistically the whole person, making sure that you
15:26have all these different individuals, different specialties adding to their care. I guess, how do
15:32you make, I mean, that's like you said, it's a big problem to have, right? So when you were starting,
15:36what was the problem that you were trying to first focus on before kind of looking at the whole entire
15:41system? And if there was one lesson you want people to know about when you think about like trauma-informed
15:45care and trauma, how that impacts our health, what would be the biggest lesson you tell people about how to
15:49mitigate it, how to lessen that? Initially, we were focused on stress and grief. But then I learned
15:57as I was talking to my mentors, they was like, you know, all of this is associated with trauma. And I
16:03didn't know that the unexpected passing of my son was a traumatic experience. I didn't know that I was
16:08having traumatic grief. I didn't know that all of these things were associated with trauma. So it turned
16:13out being much bigger than what I initially went into. It was trauma. And I was scared to say the
16:19word because I said, she's going to be like trauma. I don't, I don't have trauma. Nobody has trauma. But then
16:25when you do your trauma symptoms checklist and you look at the insomnia, look at the irritable bowel
16:30syndrome, look at the anxiety, depression, the hypertension, the traumatic stress, the broken heart
16:35syndrome, you have trauma. And we have to work on that. So it became larger. The biggest lesson I would say is
16:41that we really need a more trauma informed society. We're in a more compassionate society.
16:46We need to know how to really nurture one another because if we had a trauma informed,
16:50compassionate society, we'll know how to approach much better. I think that's the really biggest one
16:56is trauma informed society. We have to have it. And what does that mean? That means understanding
17:01that each one of us may have some type of trauma we've been through. So keeping that in the back of our
17:05mind with how we talk, how we approach, how we interact. Think about trauma informed. Just be compassionate.
17:11Every day when you're meeting with someone, give grace. Give grace. Give grace. We don't know
17:16what they've been through. Give grace. Absolutely. Thank you. And last but not least, Star.
17:27I have ROI. Return on investment. And I think about my company and what ROI means usually is when you put
17:38money into something, you get more money back. And ROI for us is when we provide care for someone,
17:46we have more in return. I'll give you a personal example of one of our patients who was diabetic and
17:55she had her daughter assisting her as a caregiver. So the ROI is supporting the diabetes patient. That's
18:03tangible, right? We know what that is. They have a device. They have a reading, need to adjust their diet.
18:09We're assisting them saving their kidneys. That's tangible. The intangible part of that ROI is directly
18:18related to the daughter that's the caregiver. And when she called us and thanked us for monitoring her
18:26mom for making certain that her mom was up, active, engaged, that she had not passed out from a diabetic
18:33coma or worse, she was then able to go to work, focus on her job, not have so much anxiety or trauma
18:42related to something bad happening to her mom while she was at work. That's the intangible, but that's the
18:50return that is a farther reach. So that's what we concentrate on. Getting the data from a patient
18:57and providing care, that's the easiest part of what we do. That downstream impact for that return on
19:05investment, that's what we're focused on to make sure those ancillary benefits come back even greater.
19:12Absolutely. And I love that you're making ROI more than just some financial thing, which is what we often
19:16think about, but thinking about, like, literally what is happening in that person's life to transform
19:21it overall. And just a quick follow-up question. When you were getting started with this, what were
19:25the first things that you noticed that patients were not having to think about as much anymore?
19:29So the big thing is medication. It is so hard for people to not just remember to take a medication,
19:39but to take it properly. When you get that leaflet with your prescription from Walgreens,
19:45do you really sit down and read it from cover to cover? Do you understand the language in that leaflet?
19:54Do you know not to take that medicine with an acidic juice like orange juice? So making certain that
20:01that education point is there to make it easier for people to take their medications, stay on track with
20:09their care plan. We remove some of that by engaging with you on a clinical level, but also on a personal
20:16level to know what kind of support you benefit from having the most.
20:22Absolutely. Can we give a big round of applause for each of them?
20:25So as we heard, we had five different words. We had, now I'm blanking on all of them. We had
20:33policy. There's one. Okay, actually, hold it up. Policy, disruption, team, ROI, and market. There we go.
20:42And each of these words represent both the external and internal things that are needed to create
20:47solutions and be entrepreneurs to build businesses. So Release the Pressure one more time is amplifying
20:53the health and helping health innovators and founders, solution developers, and customers
20:59have a significant opportunity for impact at the organizational level. So to learn more,
21:04or to take the pledge and prioritize your heart health, visit releasethepressure.com. Highly suggest
21:10you check it out. It has great information on there. And to learn more about each of these innovative
21:14companies, please visit the innovators to your right, our left over there, in the SoCo market,
21:20get such new voices, villagers.
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