More than 40% of Americans qualify as obese, a number that continues to rise. And despite being a multi-billion dollar business — the weight loss industry just isn’t helping people lose weight. Perhaps that’s why new GLP-1 medications, like Wegovy, are getting so much attention.

To learn if Wegovy can be a true game changer, I spoke to Sarah Jones Simmer, CEO of Found, the largest medically-supported weight care clinic in the country which has raised over $130M in venture funding.

Join us as we delve into the history of the weight loss industry, and discuss how telehealth (and responsible prescribing) along with new medications, may just be an inflection point.

Dr. Laurie Zephyrin, Heart of Healthcare Grant Challenge judge and SVP for Advancing Health Equity at the Commonwealth Fund, interviews Dr. Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha from Tuft’s Center for Black Maternal Health & Reproductive Justice. The mission of the CBMHRJ is to foster academic and community-engaged research in support of the center’s goals to conduct maternal health research with a focus on Black maternal health and eliminating inequities.

Starting a company is hard, even in the best of times. But now? For many of us, it feels impossible. In this episode, I talk to Sami Inkinen, a founder who has run companies in both bull and bear markets. Sami was the co-founder of Trulia (IPO) and now Virta Health (valued at $2B).

In this episode, I talk to two of my favorite long-time colleagues in digital health: Chrissy Farr and Malay Gandhi.

Chrissy started her career in this space as a digital health reporter for VentureBeat, FastCompany, and CNBC before becoming a venture capitalist at OMERS ventures.

Malay started his career in management consulting before joining me at Rock Health where he served as Managing Director and CEO before going onto be an EIR at Greylock Partners, an executive at Eviction Health, and now Head of Strategy & Corporate Development at Benching.

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company

In today's episode, you'll hear from the six semi-finalists of the Heart of Healthcare Grant Challenge. Place your votes before end of the month!

This episode was recorded with My Climate Journey to explore the intersection of climate change and human health. Dr. Darragh O'Carroll is a science communicator and emergency physician specializing in emergency, disaster, climate, and COVID-19 medicine. He's making a documentary series called "Infected planet" to illustrate how climate change is affecting global and public health, and highlight the solutions.

The number of online companies offering mail-order invisible aligners is booming. But this orthodontist says some are ruining people's teeth and harming their overall health. In this episode, I talk to orthodontist and entrepreneur Dr. Ingrid Murra about the state of venture-backed dentistry. Dr. Murra is the Founder & CEO of Two Front, a digital health startup bringing next-generation orthodontics to the market.

It’s in our water, our food, and so many other products we use on a daily basis, from non-stick pans to popcorn bags. Exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals”, has been linked to a variety of health conditions including cancer, infertility, birth defects, developmental delays, asthma, allergies, cardiovascular disease, obesity and more. In this episode, we talk to one of the world’s leading environmental health scientists and advocates Arlene Blum, who is the founder and executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute.

In this episode, I sit down with epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera to discuss Monkeypox, Polio, COVID, and why pandemics are becoming more common.

Jessica serves as the Science Communication Lead for The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, a Research Fellow at Boston Children's Hospital Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator, an Infection Preventionist at Netflix, and a Senior Advisor to the Pandemic Prevention Institute at the Rockefeller Foundation. This episode was recorded at the Rock Health Virtual Summit.

Dr. Jennifer Lincoln is using social media to educate and bust the (many) myths surrounding reproductive health and abortion. Dr. Lincoln is a board-certified OBGYN who is passionate about helping people understand their bodies and feel empowered to advocate for themselves. She is the author of Let's Talk About Down There: An OBGYN Answers All Your Burning Questions Without Making You Feel Embarrassed for Asking.

In this episode, Catherine Coleman Flowers (the “Erin Brockovich of Sewage”) explains how crumbling infrastructure causes toxic sewage spills in the backyards of poor, rural communities. Flowers also talks about how she discovered an outbreak of an intestinal, blood-feeding parasite we thought had been eradicated in the United States. Catherine Coleman Flowers is a MacArthur 'Genius' grant winner, the founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and the author of Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret.

Ageism is the one ‘ism’ that affects all of us. We all age, if we're so lucky. So why are ageist messages in the media and workplace so pervasive? And what is the impact? In this episode, I talk with advocate Cindy Gallop who is helping build an aspirational culture around aging. After a successful career in advertising, she launched her company on the TED stage, with the goal to end ageism, increase happiness, and promote world peace. You’ll learn exactly what and how her company does in the interview.

Anne Wojcicki started 23andMe in 2006 to empower consumers with access to their own genetic information. In this episode, she shares the highs and lows of this journey including getting an FDA warning letter, going public, and genotyping over 12 million customers. Plus, she shares why she thinks our healthcare system is a communist system and how genetic relative surprises are remarkably common.

August is breastfeeding month. And this year it hits different. We have faced a severe shortage of infant formula, with an out-of-stock rate surging to 70%. While it's easy to say ""just breastfeed!"" — not everyone can breastfeed for a variety of reason, and we don’t exactly make it easy for working mothers.

Nearly half of girls in the U.S. have lacked access to period products, and 1 in 5 have missed school because of it. With a tampon shortage and increasing costs, the problem is worsening and forcing girls to use unhygienic and unsafe alternatives. And it doesn’t help that most states tax period products like luxury goods. In this episode, we discuss the movement for menstrual equity with Lynette Medley, the Founder & CEO of No More Secrets Mind Body Spirituality.

Patrick Brown, founder of Impossible Foods, doesn’t care about food. He just wants to stop climate change. And he knows the best way to halt global warming is to ditch meat from animals. A former Stanford Professor, Patrick Brown started Impossible Foods at age 60 and has helped grow it to a multi-billion dollar company and household name. In this episode, we talk about his journey to save the planet and human health, and how food is just the vessel for that mission.

Patrick Brown, founder of Impossible Foods, doesn’t care about food. He just wants to stop climate change. And he knows the best way to halt global warming is to ditch meat from animals. A former Stanford Professor, Patrick Brown started Impossible Foods at age 60 and has helped grow it to a multi-billion dollar company and household name. In this episode, we talk about his journey to save the planet and human health, and how food is just the vessel for that mission.