Healthy Conversations

We’re re-releasing a special two-part episode about innovations in suicide prevention in recognition of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. In this second episode, Dr. Seth Feuerstein, the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, talks about his company’s digital therapeutics aimed at reducing suicide – which he calls “the only leading cause of death without any prescription products.” He speaks with our host, Dr...

In recognition of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, today we’re re-releasing a special two-part episode with Dr. Seth Feuerstein, a psychiatrist and researcher who’s made the study and treatment of suicide his life’s work. Dr. Feuerstein is the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, which is building life-saving digital therapeutics to help in preventing suicide. He and our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, have a wide...

If you look around, you’ll probably notice that the U.S. population is getting older. In fact, one in five people will be retirement age by 2030. And the latest Health Trends Report, The Future of Healthy Aging , quotes the U.S. Census Bureau that three out of five people over the age of 65 manage two or more chronic conditions. “If we go back maybe 60 years or so, 40% of health care in America wa...

Primary care is the backbone of the health care system. So the question is, how do you keep the primary care system itself healthy? That’s the timely topic of this Healthy Conversations episode, where Sree Chaguturu, MD, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for CVS Health, addresses the challenges of delivering the right care at the right time, and in the right place. As he puts it,...

While the health care industry can be challenging, with complex regulations and long-established bureaucracies, an innovative company called Redesign Health is working to transform it from within. Redesign Health is one of a number of organizations that received fresh funding last fall to boost health care startups from CVS Health Ventures , a unit of CVS Health which focuses on data-driven medici...

How are we doing right now in terms of mental health in the United States?  According to Dr. Taft Parsons III, the Chief Psychiatric Officer at CVS Health, the situation is alarming: “Before COVID, we already knew that there was more need for mental health services than there were clinicians. And so we have seen an increased demand across all age groups, across all demographics taking place over t...

Genomics may seem like a field of study with minimal impact on our daily lives. But not for much longer — and certainly not to Dr. Deepak Srivastava, a cardiologist and president of the Gladstone Institutes. Rapid technological advances in this field are starting to surface across health care with significant and promising benefits. “The new world,” says Dr. Srivastava, “is going to be one where,...

It’s been more than 20 years since the human genome was first sequenced.  And now, a new version that’s been updated with 47 men and women of diverse origins, including African Americans, East Asians, West Africans, and South Americans, among others, promises to benefit all people, regardless of their race, ethnicity or ancestry. This new version, called the “pangenome,” was announced earlier this...

Are Americans underestimating their mental health struggles? A new study from CVS Health and Harris Poll found that nearly three in four Americans describe their mental health as “excellent” or “good,” and only one in 10 say their mental health has gotten worse in the last year. Yet nearly 60% of physicians report declining mental health among their patients. Why aren’t more people willing to talk...

A recent CDC study reported that one in 36 children in the United States is diagnosed with autism. Today’s guest, Temple Grandin, is one of the country’s most renowned voices on autism with an incredible ability to open up and share her perspective on the world with us. A professor of animal science at Colorado State University, Grandin has been a pioneer in improving the welfare of farm animals f...

In part two of our conversation on clinical trials, we hear from two people directly involved in the effort to expand access to clinical trials in underserved communities. “There are challenges across the board, both in getting patients into studies and also getting them to stay in studies — what’s called retention,” says our first guest, Josh Rose, Vice President and Head of Clinical Trial Delive...

Today, in the first of a two-part episode on increasing diversity in clinical trials, we hear from Dr. Owen Garrick, Chief Medical Officer of Clinical Trial Services at CVS Health. The unit, launched in 2021, is creating a network of clinical research sites by equipping certain HealthHUB and MinuteClinic locations with the staff and resources needed to conduct complex clinical trial protocols. The...

In part two of our conversation about the Clinical Entrepreneur Programme from England’s National Health Service, our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, continues his discussion with Dr. Tony Young, the program’s founder. They talk about a number of innovations brought about through the program, including two aimed at addressing health disparities. CardMedic uses a collection of “digital flashcards” to help...

Clinicians are problem solvers by nature but taking an idea for a new innovation from concept to commercial market is not a skill widely taught in medical school. In 2015, England’s National Health Service (NHS) launched a Clinical Entrepreneur Programme to help provide just that type of knowledge and expertise. Our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, speaks with Dr. Tony Young, the founder of that program wh...

One in four people in the U.S. has been diagnosed with a gastrointestinal (GI) condition, says the co-founder and CEO of Oshi Health, Sam Holliday. The patient journey to diagnosis is costly and long—often two to four years—and filled with tests, examinations and waiting rooms. Oshi Health is a startup and CVS Health Ventures partner that uses an integrated virtual care model to scale access to ca...

In Part 2 of the Healthy Conversations discussion with Dr. Brennan Spiegel, professor of medicine and public health at Cedar Sinai Health System, gastroenterologist, and VR pioneer, lets us peak into the future, and see some of the many ways VR is getting “real-er” – as he puts it: “You can experience life as someone with a disability, or as a different race, or with certain physical or visual han...

In the first of a 2-part episode on Healthy Conversations, Dr. Brennan Spiegel, a professor of medicine and public health at Cedars-Sinai Health System, gastroenterologist, and VR pioneer, discusses the exciting possibilities of virtual reality in terms of its affecting the human mind, as well as chronic diseases. As he puts it, "Rather than always bringing patients to the clinic, what if we can b...

In the second of a two-part episode about suicide, Dr. Seth Feuerstein, the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, discusses the exciting potential of digital therapeutics in preventing suicide.  As he says, “So we can use software to tackle problems where we already have lots of prescription options, but -- the thing that really excites me is where can we use software to solve problems that were not previously...

Dr. Seth Feuerstein, the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, dispels misconceptions about suicide in the first of a 2-part episode of Healthy Conversations.

Where do things stand now in terms of COVID, Long – and even Medium COVID?  What have we learned after the past three years, and what should we, going forward?  On the latest Healthy Conversations episode, Dr. Kirsten Anderson, senior medical director for New England for Aetna and CVS Health, shares insights with Daniel, and tells why she feels the role of public health is more important than ever...

Listening to Brad Bostic, founder, chairman, and CEO of HC1 -- and Daniel’s latest guest -- you can’t help but be excited about the future: “We've got this incredible opportunity that's once in multiple generations to advance the ball, and it's because you've got access to medical information that's digital unlike you've ever had, and you've got this access to compute, and you have a collection of...

This episode features Dr. James Allen, the founder and CEO of Health Systems Thinkers. Dr. Allen went from being a small-town physician in upstate New York, to working for a company in Borneo and later Bangladesh. In the process, he became one of the foremost authorities on community medicine. Being in a remote small town made him see the workplace as part of the community.

In this episode, first released in the fall of 2021, Daniel sits down with Dr. Patrick Hines, the founder and CEO at Functional Fluidics and the leading Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he set up a transformational study on defining the health of red blood cells. Dr. Hines also introduces us to exciting new therapies — recently approved — and the imp...

Tim Blake, the founder and managing director of Semantic Consulting, helps organizations grapple with digital change and digital disruption. And he talks with Daniel about the challenges and potential of digital healthcare – as well as what he learned as the chief information officer of the Tasmanian Health System, such as, “Sometimes problems can be far simpler than we think they are when you ask...

Dr. James Stoller is the Chairman of the Education Institute at Cleveland Clinic, a pulmonary critical care physician, and author of Exception to the Rule. Daniel and James sat down to discuss deficit-based thinking, medicine being a team sport, and the simple fact that "doctors, like everyone else that join organizations, expect to grow over the course of their career."