A Case for Techno Realism with Deena Shakir

I think healthcare, as I said, is not only inherently human, it's inherently personal. And one of the things I look for in a founder is actually something that I think a good investor brings to the table too, which is that personal experience. Listen, this is not easy.

It's hard.

It's kind of irrational to do. You have to have that obsession, that grit. And oftentimes that is something that comes back to personal experience.

Welcome to The Other 80. I'm Claudia Williams. I'm guessing many of us work in health because we too have an obsession, an obsession with caring for others, an obsession with making an impact, maybe just an obsession with health policy. For investor Deena Shakir, her obsession is expanding access to basic services people need and often cannot access. Pediatric care, community health, women's services. Her journey to investing passed through policymaking, journalism, and big tech. And I really love how all of these different perspectives inform her unique approach as a VC in the health space. This summer, I sat down with Deena during Aspen Ideas Health, and I can tell you that her superpower is an ability to see big opportunities for impact. Hiding in Plain Sight. Please welcome Deena Shakir to The Other 80. Before we get to the interview, a reminder that we send out a monthly email newsletter with new episodes, upcoming health events, job listings, and news you won't want to miss. You can subscribe at www.theother80.com. Deena, it's so great to have you on the show.

I'm delighted to be here in beautiful Aspen.

My old colleague and boss, Todd Park, used to talk about triathletes, people who have careers that have spanned across many sectors, who bring particular kind of insights and ways of looking at the world. So for you, you worked at the State Department, you were a journalist for BBC, and you worked at Google, and now you're an investor. What have you brought with you from those different, uh, roles and jobs now as an investor?

I love that. I'm gonna start calling myself a triathlete. There's so many different ways to talk about having zigzagged in your career, but that's a good one. And I'm a big fan of Todd as well. So, you know, for me, I was always orienting around this north star of, of how can I have an impact? And that really stems back to my childhood and growing up, coming of age. I grew up in the Bay Area. My parents are both immigrants from Iraq. I was in high school during 9/11. So these were all really formative things for my, for my identity. And, and I knew that whatever I did, I needed to do something that had impact and really had no idea that I would end up about being a VC. I don't think I even knew what a VC was growing up. You know what my undergraduate degree is in? Social studies and Near Eastern languages and civilizations for undergrad. And I have a master's from the School of Foreign Service, actually. So again, always orienting around this North Star of impact. And so that landed me originally in journalism, to your point, very briefly. I would barely call it a career, and I was really just an intern for the BBC, but I was an aspiring Christiane Amanpour. I thought that would be my path. And I was actually covering a speech that President Obama gave shortly after he Obama was inaugurated, which was about new beginnings with the Muslim world. And it was focused on this idea of technology and entrepreneurship as a better way of building bridges. And that speech turned into a watershed moment for me. I decided I didn't want to be just writing about this moment in time and this sort of historic pivot for the administration. I actually wanted to be a part of it. And that's how I ended up in the Obama administration working actually for Secretary Clinton at the State Department and specifically working on a lot of the programs that came out of that speech. And so, you know, now we're talking 2010, I'd finished my master's, I'm working on, on, on all these programs. And it's also something interesting happening in the Bay, in Silicon Valley, again, where I grew up and never thought I would live again. But I was noticing that, as it's often termed, software is eating the world, right? So there was this movement happening there, and I was finding my way back in Silicon Valley, believe it or not, for my work at the State Department, working on public-private partnerships, working on different programs to help stimulate entrepreneurship through the diaspora communities. And felt this center of gravity shifting figuratively and literally out west. And then the final sort of moment that really made me realize I needed to be back in Silicon Valley was the Arab Spring. Seeing at the time, of course, we all had a lot more hope as to what would come of these revolutions, but seeing the movements happening on the ground, and I had spent so much time, of course, I'm originally from the region, I had studied there, I had lived there, and I never thought that it would happen that quickly and in that way. And I felt like technology indeed had a very pivotal role in, in that democratization process. So that's what led me to want to, to, to go into tech and landed at Google in 2012 working on actually civic innovation. So fast forward to VC, I spent a couple of years at Google, got to work on a bunch of really cool, awesome, audacious projects. This is before Alphabet existed and sort of stumbled into healthcare. Very quickly became obsessed with the intersection of healthcare and tech. Now we're talking about 2013, 2014, so early days for digital health. We ended up building a big team and launched this product, but I was also meeting a lot of incredible entrepreneurs with far fewer resources, of course, than my team at Google. And I realized that that's really where the impact was to be had, and I wanted to follow that and follow them. And, and that's how I got into venture.

That's such a great setup for all kinds of conversations. And one thing I remember so much from that early phase of imagining into technology as a force of change was Clay Shirky's work. I don't know if you've read his books, but he wrote a lot about ways in which technology helps people innovate and come together without formal organization. And I've been reflecting on this sort of utopian view of technology I think I might have had, and certainly the internet. And I'm curious for you, what have you retained in terms of that kind of more optimistic utopian view that you had at that time? And where has that been tempered with, oh, this is the way it's actually working?

Oh, such a good question. It's something I think about a lot. I actually, I think Jon Haidt's piece on this a little over a year ago, maybe 2 years now in The Atlantic, he actually goes back to that moment in time that I identified. And I hadn't really seen many people do that, that, that sort of peak of techno-optimism, which was around the Arab Spring and that moment in time. And of course, so much has happened since then. Actually, ironically, he has now written specifically around the impact of social media on kids, on teenagers, on young people, and the deleterious effects. And so at the time, we thought of social media as this democratizing force, and now we see it as this sort of dangerous, potentially toxic force. And that's just social media in particular. You know, net-net, I think tech is progress. Tech is a movement forward, and there is tons of good to be had there. But as we are realizing more and more, of course, there is a lot of caution that needs to be exercised. And I think AI in particular is one area, certainly we're talking about it today at this event, where that is particularly poignant. But since the advent of technology, you know, anything that sort of automates or accelerates human input has been a source of fear for a lot of folks. And I don't necessarily ascribe to that. I still consider myself to be a techno optimist, but I'd call myself more of a a cautious techno-optimist. To be a VC, you have to be optimistic, but I continue to be incredibly inspired and excited by some of the technologies that I come across daily.

I was spending some time on your company website, and one of the things that is highlighted there is megatrends and the idea of looking for those things that are accelerating faster than others.

Mm-hmm.

In health and healthcare, what are those things?

So there are some obvious things, and I think in this moment in time, what's the obvious thing everyone's talking about? Well, there are two acronyms really, AI and GLP-1s, right? Those are the obvious things, but it's the less obvious—

Combined, they'll be even more amazing.

Oh yeah. And I've seen quite a few pitches that try to combine them. Absolutely. So there's a lot, and I think in healthcare, there's this sort of juxtaposition of the rapid technology and then the fact that we still use fax machines, right? In fact, I often point to that example. One of the first big launches around AI with Doximity literally had the word fax machine in the press release associated with its big AI launch. So we have to sort of temper that enthusiasm with the, the way that healthcare continues to be administered. Some of the most exciting companies that I have the privilege of working with daily are cutting edge, but also doing basic things. What I mean by doing basic things is delivering care where it's needed. So I'm on the board of a company called Waymark, which is focused on innovation in the Medicaid space. Part of what I get most excited about is the fact that they are delivering primary care services to people who need it, but they're doing so actually utilizing one of the coolest applications of AI that I've seen in healthcare. They have a product called Signal, which is able to predict with a high 90% accuracy ED admissions and ultimately help reduce costs. So again, it's the juxtaposition of these two things. That in of itself is just an academic project. That applied to delivering care, leveraging community health workers, meeting patients where they are, that's how you're improving lives. And that's, I think, the holy grail of healthcare.

I've been observing you and your fellow investors say, be really careful about selling to employers because they're super, super hard. Oh, consumers don't really work either. And it feels like sometimes the only purchasers left are pharma and health plans. I think health systems are sort of somewhere in the middle. And so I'm curious if that's also your view, if, if most of your business opportunities are geared towards in the health space to pharma and health plans, or if you see a more nuanced perspective. And if that is the case, what does that mean for investment?

Yeah, it, it is a little bit more nuanced. And I say that because it depends on stage and the actual company. And I, I believe that there are incredible healthcare companies that did start out or do start out direct to consumer. And you can build a beautiful, delightful product that engages patients that's filling a real need. And I'll give you a specific example of a company whose board I'm on, which is Maven Clinic. So Maven started off as a direct to consumer. A consumer, you know, app really that was focused on maternal health. And they developed such a strong following and such demand from effectively consumers that they were able to go into employers. And when they got into employers, of course I'm fast forwarding through many years of trial and error, but they were able to get enough scale that they could start to show outcomes. And when they were able to get that large enough N to start to show outcomes, And so for Maven, it was specifically, uh, reduction in C-section rates and NICU admissions. They recently published a paper specifically outlining the, the value of virtual doulas and its impact on outcomes. And so that's where you're able to get into the payers and in particular into sort of into Medicaid. So that's one example. Summer Health is another great example of a company that we seeded alongside Sequoia and, and, uh, co-led the Series A along with Sevenwire. At the moment, the company is focused direct-to-consumer. If you are a parent with a child or multiple children, as I am, you need to use Summer Health. It's text-based pediatric care, literally a pediatrician in your pocket. It's not a chatbot, it's a, it's an actual pediatrician. Of course, they too are using AI on the backend, um, to help streamline their, uh, efficiency, but they are able to show that they can actually create a clinical workflow that pediatricians love and a user experience that patients love. And now with lots of changes happening on the payer side in terms of reimbursements for, you know, for asynchronous care, they're able to start to think about moving in that direction. So that's another example. I will say there was a period of time where everybody thought selling to pharma was the answer. I have quite a few companies that sell to pharma. Let me tell you something. It's not that easy. It's really not. And health systems might be some of the hardest customers, but also some of the most lucrative. And so again, it depends. There's quite a few companies right now that are focused on selling to health systems around AI. And so I think that there are big companies to be had in all these categories. And, you know, there are some great public companies like Hims, for example, which are still purely D2C and doing quite well, relatively speaking.

I think what you've also pointed out is sometimes it's a phased approach. Maybe eventually you get to a health plan, right? But you might cycle through some other market opportunities that will remain part of your overall go-to-market, but may not be the ultimate biggest client. That's right. You have made some big investments in women's health, and I've also been very vocal about how underinvested this space is. And you've pointed out that 80% of the health spend is managed, controlled, or to the benefit of women. And yet we look at it as a niche market, which is just always so, so shocking.

Yes.

And you've mentioned a couple of those investments that you've made. How do you think about that space and generating more commitment and interest, not only for your fund, but other funds and the federal government in this women's health space?

Yeah, well, you know, the good news is when I first started saying that, since then things have changed already. So there's already some progress in terms of more investment dollars being poured into these companies, more companies like Maven and of course public companies like Progeny and so on that are serving as icons and, you know, rays of hope for the earlier stage companies. Major moves by the federal government, including $100 million being dedicated to this space by the Biden administration, including of course ARPA-H focusing on, on these bets as well, which I'm very excited about. None of that was, you know, even on the periphery of what could be possible just 3, 4 years ago. So that's really exciting. At the same time, you've got major headwinds, broadly speaking, in health in terms of public comps and sort of what do these companies look like? What do these exits look like? And then how do you sort of navigate the AI of it all along with with services. So there's still a lot that remains to be seen, but I am very optimistic and excited to see the progress that has been made, the very large rounds that have been announced. You know, when we, when we co-led Maven Series D, it was the first women's health unicorn. And there are more of those now. And so that's really promising. And I will say, you know, for so long, women's health was really just seen as reproductive health, and certainly that is a big part of it. But we know there is much more to it. And as you said, 80% of these decisions made are made by oftentimes by women in the household. As Neil Shaw from Maven calls it, they are the chief medical officer of the family. And so that's where you can start to think about pediatric care, family health, the sort of sandwich generation, the caregiving crisis. There's still a tremendous amount of opportunity there that's related to women's health, but not just within women's health.

There have been plenty of people who have talked about where we are right now in the investment space and the slowing of investment, but also greater focus on profitable, viable businesses versus just on growth.

Yeah.

And also, I think a recognition in the reality that in healthcare we're not going to see the kind of untethered technology growth. It's always going to be connected in some way to adoption by somebody or a service.

Right.

So it's just— it just has a different trajectory. If you had to sum all that up in terms of not so much the specific opportunity spaces, but more how to navigate this moment in time, what would you say?

I would say I believe that healthcare is, is and always will be inherently human, but there is so much latency and there's so much inefficiency and there's so much opportunity within that for real venture-like outcomes and venture-like scale. And especially now with what we've seen in the last year or 2 years, 3 years of with AI and LLMs, I think there is a tremendous opportunity. There have just been a few of, of these large and announcements made that are healthcare focused. It was not necessarily the low-hanging fruit for AI. And so we're going to see a lot more of that, I think, and it'll be applied across the board from large language models for therapeutic development to the sort of EHR of it all, which is another big thing. And, you know, everyone's talking about what this can do in the payer space with prior auth, what can it do in specialty pharma, and so on. But again, tech for tech's sake is not the answer in healthcare. It's tech that ultimately makes healthcare better. And that makes it again more efficient, more equitable, more effective. And so that's what I get excited about. I think there's a lot, there's still a lot of low-hanging fruit there.

A parallel area that people often talk about as being underinvested is Medicaid. And there was a famous article that looked at Medicare Advantage investments and Medicaid, and it was almost a 10-to-1 split for them. I had Andy Slavitt on the show and he was like, I'm like, are you kidding? These are huge markets. At the same time, as a founder, I think the complexities of Medicaid are both the multiple markets that are all a little different and the fact that payment rates tend to be on the lower side. So you have to look for places where you can bundle value along with the payment.

That's right.

Waymark is a company that you've backed. It's also been in the news as a potential— I have no idea if they're IPOing or not, but as a potential big exit at some point. If you had to distill from their experience the advice you'd give to other founders interested in Medicaid, what would that be?

Medicaid is hard. There's no denying that. And Andy is right. It is a massive market. And, you know, I think Waymark is special in many ways. First of all, like any company that I back, it has absolutely extraordinary founders, Dr. Rajai Badniji and Dr. Sanjay Basu and Afiya as well, who I had the privilege of working with at Google. Incredible, incredible founding team. Not their first rodeo, so they were able to apply their learning, Sanjay and Rajat in particular, coming out of Collective Health, Afia having spent quite some time not only on the regulatory side but at, at Google Health to this use case. And there's a reason it's not done that often. There's a reason it takes a lot of capital to do so. Like again, it is not easy, but to be able to actually apply real tech to this, it's not just, you know, lipstick on a pig, but like I said, real AI, for example, to the space, I think it's an opportunity to, to change the margin game and to help address some of these concerns that you articulately pointed out around reimbursement rates. There are some things that won't change and there are things that, you know, hopefully tech can help to navigate. And so these asset-light models, these models that are leveraging underleveraged care workers like community health workers that are providing culturally competent care, and at the end of the day that are improving metrics and outcomes, are the ones that get me excited. Of course, there's still a lot to be proven out, But Waymark as one company has really surpassed my expectations in terms of that potential. And I still, you know, I'm actively looking for more investments in this space because I think it's an exciting one.

So to listeners out there that have founded companies or want to, you heard it here. I was really struck at the celebrity status of the investment group that came together for Summer, where you have yourself, Chelsea Clinton, who everybody knows. Melinda Gates through Pivotal. If you were to bring an equivalent group of amazing women leaders together around another big opportunity, what would it be?

One of my favorite parts of this job is being able to bring these amazing women together around these ideas. And we've done it with Maven, right? Lots of celebrities involved in that. We, you know, Oprah got it, came into the round that we came in. Mindy Kaling, Natalie Portman, and, you know, CVS Health Ventures, not a celebrity, but a pretty big player in this space. And you forgot to mention Alyssa Jaffe from Sevenwire, who is one of the best healthcare investors out there. So listen, Listen, I think when the product is magic like that, it happens. We all use the product daily. I just had my third child 9 months ago, and I've become a super user of Summer Health now. And so there's something about that sort of investor market fit that's really exciting. I am so heartened to see so many more investors who are bringing their personal experiences to the table. I think healthcare, as I said, is not only inherently human, it's inherently personal. And one of the things I look for in a founder is actually something that I think a good investor brings to the table too, which is that personal experience. Listen, this is not easy. It's hard. It's kind of irrational to do, to do this, to do so. You have to have that obsession, that grit. And oftentimes that is something that comes back to personal experience. We are, uh, also investors in a company called Trial Library, which is founded by Dr. Hala Borno, which is specifically focused on increasing, uh, diversity and inclusion within clinical trials, which is a massive problem. And I was, uh, very excited to, to co-invest alongside my good friend, Eason from Next Ventures, who is not a woman but is one of the few Black men managing their own venture funds and also brings a wealth of healthcare experience to the table as well. And so again, I think that sort of representation comes in different ways and is adding lots of value to these companies.

So the next interview in about an hour will be with the head of ARPA-H, Renee, and—

She's awesome.

And you mentioned the Sprint for Women's Health that they've just launched.

Yes.

What makes you excited about that? Out and what would you like to see come out of it?

I would say a couple of things. First of all, there is not only the sort of underinvestment right now on, on the actual investment side in venture capital, but there is a severe underinvestment on the research side, and we know that. And without that, we won't be able to invest in anything. So we need these breakthroughs to happen. There's a great track record of DARPA and, and other similar initiatives that are able to catalyze that. I know as someone who invests across stages, this sheer amount and volume of cool ideas that come my way at the earliest stages, but oftentimes they need more more nondilutive funding. They need more of that type of, you know, NIH type of investment. And so this is going to have tremendous effects down the road in terms of the types of companies we're able to invest in that include these very, very large breakthroughs. One example right now I think that we can talk about is menopause. Menopause is a very exciting space now. It wasn't a few years ago. You know, Maven of course has a large menopause product. Mitty Health is doing really well, but there are not that many options when it comes to actual treatment. For menopause. It's still sort of hormone replacement therapy, right? And so I saw some incredible ideas coming, uh, coming out of that that are looking into new therapeutic interventions for menopause. Can we do better for not just some women, literally every single one of us that makes it to that stage of life will go through this. That's a pretty large market, right? And so I think that's another area that, um, that I'm excited about.

One of the things I'll be asking her is, trying to describe the unique niche that they might sit in that is not NIH, right? And is not a venture fund.

Yeah.

What would you like that space to be?

Yeah, I mean, wouldn't it be awesome if there was like an Institute for Women's Health? I think down the road that, that is something that, you know, could be on the horizon, should be on the horizon. But in the meantime, a dedicated pool of capital going towards funding breakthroughs in this in this broad realm, but with also very specific, clear priorities, which is exactly what ARPA-H is doing, I think is going to go a long way. So it's tremendously exciting. Listen, the innovation has to happen across the board. We haven't talked about this, but there's a hell of a lot happening on the policy and legislative side that can have a tremendous impact on all the work that we're doing. So that needs to be addressed. The research funding needs to be addressed. The venture capital situation is already improving, needs to be improved further. All of these things are going to contribute to hopefully future entrepreneurs, future ideas, future venture-scale ideas, right? That's the other thing. Not every, not every idea is necessarily a venture idea. And so that's one of the roles that ARPA-H will play, I think, is offering that type of capital to these companies that are— or not even to companies, to initiatives, to research projects, to ideas. And some of them will be companies that hopefully I'll have the chance to back down the road.

Great pipeline for the kinds of things you might build an investment in.

Definitely.

You mentioned policy, and I want to do the buds and the thorns side of policy. When I was at the White House, one of the big roles I played in the Obama administration was going out and engaging with entrepreneurs around some of the big policy plays that were creating new opportunities. So the ones at that time were obviously the ACA marketplaces, the EHR incentives, which which since then I think we're all a little troubled by what happened to the market, but was a huge opportunity. And also ACOs and value-based care in general. And really what that role was, was to help articulate and show the path for the business opportunity this was creating. When you look at the policy landscape today, what business opportunities are you seeing being created by either state or federal policy? Policy?

Yeah, well, I mean, there's, there are many facets to that question. I would say, of course, Medicaid, there's a lot of innovation that can happen there. There's also not policy, but policy directives like the $100 million going towards women's health that could have an impact. And then there are, you know, issues that are on the Supreme Court that I think will have a significant impact in some of the spaces that, that we invest in, you know, fertility and IVF being one of them. And that's something that causes me a lot of heartburn. And hopefully we're all keeping, keeping our eyes and ears open and trying to do what we can to make sure that any decision that is made is science-based and, and that it doesn't limit the, the agency and the, and the reproductive autonomy of, of all women.

And you've pointed out, I think the legal issues around reproductive health obviously are hugely troubling for people, but also create a harder environment for investment and growing companies.

Yes and no. I will say, so right after the Dobbs leak, I remember very clearly where I was and kind of the reaction afterwards. And I would say in the like 6 to 12 months afterwards, as somebody who has been outspoken for quite some time around women's health and reproductive justice, I got literally just a flood of inbound from investors saying, what can we do? What can we do? What can we do? And guess what? Capital deployment is a means of action. We all have our ways of doing things. That's not something to be ignored. That happened and it continues to happen. So I, you know, I don't necessarily think it's going to have the sort of intuitive, like, okay, there are regulatory constraints, let's not invest here. It may have an impact on the growth of some of these companies down the road. And so there'll have to be different, you know, different models. But I was heartened by the sort of inbound, at least that I got coming out of that.

And to your point, it's personal, right? And so people see this and want to do something about it. And the recent Supreme Court decision around misopristone is also, I think, I think opens up a lot of those possibilities for those companies that are doing distributing. So I have in my career triathlete experience, have recently landed at the Berkeley School of Public Health. My focus is on how to grow the social impact of the school. And the way we think about that is universities have always had the research function, the education function, but they have a function very similar to government, which is mobilizing resources, both their own and, and really in the public sphere around the areas of progress we need to see the most. Most. My first question has more to do with students who are on an entrepreneurial path, and the most classic degree you would get if you want to become a founder is either engineering or a business degree. But as I've been talking to more founders that have come out of public health, seeing this really special place for public health practitioners, especially who have business experience separately, to understand the kinds of ecosystem of problems in a very different way. At the same time, a public health degree doesn't necessarily give the students the nuts and bolts they need.

Yeah.

So if you were wanting to encourage students of public health to take a pathway as founders or as working at startups, what are the skills, behaviors, and life experiences you'd want them to have, and how can we prepare them more effectively?

Yeah, you know, actually there are quite a few public health founders in my portfolio even. Which ones? Tell us. So Rajahi and Sanjay both have experience in public health. The head of clinical at Summer Health, Dr. Ali Al-Hassani, who also happens to be my brother-in-law, also has a— he's a physician by training, MD, but also has a master's in public health. The fact of the matter is there's no degree that is going to prepare you to be a founder or an investor, right? I think a lot of it has to do with the experiences, the curiosity, the personal personality traits. But there is something about public health in particular, I think, that does lend itself well to the venture-like scale of a company because you're thinking about things more broadly. You're thinking about populations. Health, especially if you're going into a space like Medicaid. You know, I think it's really more about your inherent curiosity, your passion, your, your obsession, really. Founders should be obsessed, as I mentioned, with what they're doing.

One of the initiatives that we've started at the school, I think, is a really interesting model that I'd love to see replicated. Lynn Barr, who recently sold Caravan Health, is really obsessed with rural healthcare. She's very involved in investment space in that area, in building companies in that area, but also in the policy domain. She's come in and funded 25 students who are all over the country. They're doing our remote MPH program, and then they're coming together to create an agenda for rural health that's both in D.C. and in their own communities. So they are kind of like seeding these changes in their own local community, doing the degree, and then as a cohort coming together to imagine into the future of what this could look like. We are very grateful to Lynn because this is a huge, amazing initiative, but it also gives students a chance to see the power of what they can do together as a cohort focused on a specific topic area. My question for you is, what would that look like for women's health? What would a fellowship program look like at a school of public health that does the same thing for women's health that Lynn did for rural health?

Oh, first of all, that's amazing. I love that she's doing that. Rural health is also an area I'm spending a lot of time in. We recently funded a company called Frontera, which is particularly focused on autism, pediatric, autism, but initially focused on rural America as well. We know when it comes to women's health that there are maternal healthcare deserts across rural America. So there's lots of, of opportunity there, hopefully to at least integrate some of these virtual care options as well. So I think that there's a big opportunity coming out of either a public health school or a medical school to inspire and frankly fund a lot of these would-be entrepreneurs that are looking into these, these opportunities. And it goes across the board, right? We talked about maternal health, but there's a lot as well on basic women's annual visits. So a friend of mine actually who, who, it's not a company in our portfolio, but Kara Egan is the CEO of a company called Teal Health, which is focused on a home pap smear for cervical cancer screening. Like you can imagine for women who live incredibly far away from any health system or center where they can get their annual pap smear are missing opportunities to check for a life-threatening disease. So if we can make it easy and something that can be done at home, there's a huge opportunity there as well. And that research actually came out of academia, out of Stanford. And so I'd love to see more of that happening. Again, a lot of these companies start off as research within academia. And so the more of that we can see, the hopefully the more opportunities we'll have to fund them.

We've now spent almost 24 hours here in this beautiful setting at Aspen. What have you heard that made you sit up in your seat either, either on stage or just in conversation?

Well, what Aspen does really well is convene a variety of stakeholders. And so being able to hear from not only founders, which I hear from a lot, or investors, but actually from academia, from clinicians, from policymakers, and it's real talk. So, you know, we recognize and embrace the challenges that we're facing, but I am hearing a lot of optimism and continued optimism. And let's remember, where we are at this moment in time. We are, you know, as some might say, post-COVID. I still don't know if that's the right word to use, but we came out of a global pandemic. We are dealing with a very bizarre macro environment, and then there's this wave of AI that is coloring a lot of the experience as well for investors and founders. And so I think these three things coming together in the context of health are very exciting, and I think we're really just at the beginning of what we'll see to come. So if you look at multiples on the public market, if you look at investment dollars that have into this space, there's a lot that looks kind of, you know, not so great. I'm actually still optimistic. But again, that's my job, to be optimistic.

What is the alternative, right? Listen, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been wonderful to have a conversation.

Yes, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

As you know, only 20% of of health outcomes tie back to medical care. The other 80% has to do with how we live and the resources we can access. Often, primary care is the bridge between these worlds. Primary care teams prescribe nutritional meals, link patients to housing support, and refer patients to community health workers. But when primary care is broken, how is this going to work? Underpaid doctors are shuttering their clinics, and patients and families simply cannot find primary care teams with available appointments. I was struck by how many of the companies Deena talked about are focused on addressing access to primary care. Waymark connects Medicaid members to local care teams. Summer Health provides text-based pediatric care. Maven is expanding access to women's health. And of course, it's great to see so much entrepreneurial activity in this space, but isn't it time we also fixed the underlying issues. This podcast was created by me, Claudia Williams. My podcast producer is Avery Moore-Closs. Check out the show notes for more information on Deena Shakir and her work. There is more information on my background, this podcast, and our guests on our website, www.theother80.com. You can also head to the website to subscribe to our new newsletter, which is delivered monthly and filled with resources, hot headlines, a job board, and upcoming events in health. Until next time, I'm Claudia Williams.