In 2008, disillusioned by the medical system, Dr. Lakshmin left her residency to join an extreme wellness commune that turned out to be a cult. She was seeking something outside of mainstream medicine that could help with the anguish she was feeling. She yearned for community, and for something outside of the hierarchical structure of medicine. But what she found was that the industrial wellness complex is just as flawed.

Rethinking Medical Education

April is National Minority Health Month. Health disparities run so deep in this country, that your zip code is a better predictor of your health than your genetic code. Research has shown that the conditions we face as we live, learn, and work— or what researchers call the social determinants of health— have a lot to do with our health.

In this episode, Tia Co-founder & CEO Carolyn Witte talks about trailblazing a new paradigm for women’s healthcare that treats women as whole people vs. parts or life stages.

The healthcare industry has made significant strides in the past 20 years… or has it? In this episode, we sit down with Adrian Aoun, CEO of Forward, an AI-based healthcare system, to discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) can help us achieve exponential improvements to human health.

March is National Nutrition Month and in this episode, Instacart’s CEO Fidji Simo shares her insights on scaling food as medicine programs, improving nutrition security, and making healthy choices more accessible.

In this episode, Ryan Panchadsaram, co-author of Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving our Climate Crisis, shares what we can do today to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. And what it means for our health.

Like it or not, data brokers have probably monetized your health data. But how do they get it in the first place? And what measures can you take to safeguard your health data? In this enlightening episode, I talk to data privacy expert Lucia Savage to find out.

Lucia was formerly Chief Privacy Officer at the US Department of Health and Human Services, and is currently Chief Privacy and Regulatory Officer at Omada Health.

After explosive growth in the first year of the pandemic, the amount of VC funding flowing into digital health in 2022 was about half of what it was in 2021. Meanwhile, exit opportunities have seemingly dried up.

In this episode, I talk to two of my favorite digital health investors about what the heck is happening and what we can expect in 2023.

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.