Carving Out Your Path

Tagan Engel reflects on different changemaking paths available to each of us. Her own path led her to follow her heart into the kitchen, where she applied her social justice work to food systems. In this episode, she shares the various roles she has played as a chef, educator, activist, and innovator. We discuss food as a driver of health, and as a human right.

Daisy Rosales, SOM '20, is back with her latest insights! After founding Brio seven years ago (see Season 6 Episode 1 for more) and partnering with community based organizations on mental health programming around the world, Daisy found herself positioned to partner with governments to scale these programs. She launched a study to learn more about successful government partnerships, and shares some of her findings in this episode. She also shares a case example of Brio's work, in partnership with Kshamtalaya, an education non-profit in India. Brio and Kshamtalaya are now partnering with the state of Rajasthan to scale their programming.

Adrienne Abbate is back to share the growth and evolution of her collective impact initiative with Partnerships for Community Wellness. To partner across sectors and bring multiple stakeholders to the table, building relationships and trust is key. When circumstances change and that trust is threatened, can shared public health goals bring people together across divides?

Rushika Fernandopulle founded Iora Health, which was acquired by One Medical and subsequently by Amazon. Could Amazon ever achieve Iora's health equity goals? In this episode we discuss what a "successful" exit looks like for health equity under our current capitalistic structures, and what happens after you exit. In Rushika's latest start up, Liza Health, he is exploring new structures to protect the purpose of his product. Liza Health leverages AI to build power for patients. Building new products is only a start, Rushika shares. We need a movement behind us — we need a revolution from consumers.

Ashlee Wisdom is back after raising millions in venture capital to connect Black women with culturally relevant health care. She shares advice for navigating venture capital, and her secret sauce for creating community with her users.

 When Hafeezah's son approached her with a mental health crisis, she struggled to find care for him. Formerly an executive in a large mental health company, she often got calls from Medicaid parents like herself, searching for pediatric mental health care. A mother of three, she quit her job and founded a digital health company focusing on pediatric mental health, especially for children of color. Today Backpack Healthcare offers a first of its kind certification program for pediatric mental health counseling, a network for certified counselors, and a gamification app. On National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day, Backpack announced that they've raised $9M in venture capital to expand their reach. Hafeezah discusses the surprises along the way, and how she plans to reach more people more effectively with humans at the forefront and AI in the background.

Social change is never achieved at the first attempt. The question is not whether you fail or succeed but to whom you pass the baton and how. In this episode of Impact and Innovation, SOM alumnae Song Kim shares her journey with KovaDx, a start-up working on a medical device that monitors red blood cell health for sickle cell and other blood diseases. Before coming to SOM, Song worked as a human rights lawyer defending worker and immigrant rights. She joined SOM to obtain her MBA and explore new pathways for creating social change. Graduating into the pandemic in Spring 2020, Song was recruited to join the KovaDx team and seized the opportunity. When I caught up with her a year ago on the podcast, she was transitioning into the chief executive role. But, there were red flags, about how the team was working together. In the end, they were not able to see eye to eye, and the company shut down. In the process, Song asked questions like, how can I do right by our stakeholders, all the people who supported and invested in us along the way? What would it look like to fail successfully? We explore the different options she considered, and learn how she navigated the process of admitting failure and moving on to continue in the ongoing work.

Kaakpema Yelpaala (KP) is the new faculty director of InnovateHealth Yale, and a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health. In this episode of Impact & Innovation KP shares his journey working on social innovation with public health non-profits in Africa, and the launching of his digital health start-ups operating in several East African countries, followed by his most recent start-up in the U.S. serving immigrant patients and their providers. In our discussion, KP reflects on his roller coaster journey which navigated through the non-profit and for-profit worlds in Africa, comparing these two worlds, and also comparing digital health start-ups in Africa versus the U.S. Right now the roller coaster is taking him on a policy journey, as he strives to help create policies that foster investment and innovation for health equity in the U.S., especially by entrepreneurs of color.

Peter Hagan is the Digital Health Director at Commonwealth Care Alliance, and former team member at Iora Health. Iora was a start up that created a new model for value-based care, to improve health outcomes and lower costs. Ten years after launching, it was acquired by One Medical, a primary care provider, which was later acquired by Amazon. Peter initially started out as a patient at one of Iora's first pilot sites, and later became a health coach, playing a critical role in Iora's team-based care model. His third role before leaving Iora to pursue his MPH was to work on the backend of Iora's digital health products, which included a patient-friendly electronic health record system that allowed each patient and their care team to seamlessly coordinate care. In this episode, Pete and I discuss the challenge of shifting from the dominant fee-for-service care model in the U.S., to the value-based care model which focuses on improving people's health rather than profiting from their care needs. Rather than waiting and hoping for existing players to make these changes, could it be the new entrants into the field that disrupt and transform it?

Sheena Strawter-Anthony is the Director of Impact Investing Strategy at William Casper Graustein Memorial Fund here in New Haven. She shares their efforts to manage their endowment in a way that is in line with their mission. Doing so requires them to ask tough questions about where their money is going to generate wealth that they then invest in the community. Is it possible to manage wealth in a way that can also create positive social and environmental benefits? Who is participating and who is benefiting? These are some of the tough questions we discuss in this episode.