The Other 80

Using AI in healthcare comes with a lot of promise - but access to data, lack of clarity about who will pay for these tools and the challenge of creating algorithms without bias are holding us back. In 2023, TIME named Dr. Ziad Obermeyer one of the 100 most influential people working in AI. As a professor at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, and the co-founder of a non-profit and a startup in t...

Black women in the US are 3-4 times more likely to die than white women from a pregnancy-related cause and overall the US has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the industrialized world. These deaths are preventable. Dr. Monica McLemore, a Professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing, says we should stop blaming women for their own deaths and instead address the underlying so...

What is your just cause? Karen Dale is DC Market President for Amerihealth Caritas. She is a bold and fearless leader whose “Why” is to be a catalyst for change to promote equity and deeply support people encountering difficulties. In this episode she shares the leadership practices that support this work from sharing power, to community co-design and embracing disagreement on teams.  We disc...

We may be politically divided, but when it comes to healthcare there is actually a lot we agree on as a nation. We want healthcare that is affordable. We want a healthcare system that is easy to understand and navigate. We want to know we will receive good care when we need it most. These insights are something our guest Natalie Davis takes to heart in her work at United States of Care. She and he...

The modern world, and the products we use everyday, are making us sick. But what if we could shift this trend and start to build health into everyday life? That’s exactly what Steve Downs and Thomas Goetz, co-founders of Building H, are working on. Steve, the former CTO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, joins us to discuss how Building H is helping companies and designers re-engineer products...

Rural America is facing a healthcare crisis. Home to 60 million people, rural areas face a 23% higher mortality rate compared to urban locations due to lack of infrastructure, lower socio-economic status and provider shortages. Indeed, rural areas have half as many primary care providers and an eighth as many specialists as urban locales. In this episode, Homeward’s CEO, Jennifer Schneider discuss...

Before the phrase “social drivers of health” was commonly used, Community Health Centers had already developed a model of care that was holistic, grounded in social change and embedded in the community. At this year’s HLTH Conference in Las Vegas, I sat down with Dr. Kyu Rhee, the new CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers. Dr. Rhee brings a fresh perspective to NACHC as a cli...

Is whole health here to stay, or is it a shiny new object? Our guest today is Dr. Shantanu Agrawal, Chief Health Officer at Elevance Health. He falls soundly on the “here to stay” side of the ledger. He shares that whole health is not a side business for Elevance Health and its 47.5 million members. It is the core strategy for how the company will achieve value and affordability. And it’s also wha...

For Dr. Tony Iton, we have to understand the past before we can shape the future. Our history of racism and exclusion laid the foundation for poor health in America. The way out is not simply delivering more and better services – it is building the voice and power of communities. Tony led The California Endowment’s nearly $2 billion and decade-long investment to test this approach. He shares his j...

If we want people to experience whole person health – states will have to do a lot of silo-busting to integrate, streamline and coordinate disparate medical, social and economic programs. Data will be the axis of the strategy, but who owns that data and what guardrails are needed? How do we encourage not just data but also technology sharing across state programs? Jess Kahn joins me to discuss sta...

In this episode, recorded live at the Civitas Networks for Health conference in DC, I sit down with Jennifer Pahlka, author of "Recoding America", to discuss how to improve implementation and impact of big new policy initiatives. The book and episode are essential reading and listening for anyone trying to make government – or any ambitious project - work for people. We discuss:  The dangers...

As Chief Health Equity Officer, Dr. Pooja Mittal is charged with improving equity and care for Health Net’s 3 million California members. She brings a strong data focus, skills in community organizing and a passion for social justice to this work – continuing her mother’s path as a family practice doctor working with farmworkers in California.  We discuss:  Co-designing more equitable ou...

In Season 2 we’ll be drilling down on questions about what works and how to scale. Alan Weil is a great person to kick off this conversation. He is the editor of the premiere health policy journal Health Affairs , previously directed Medicaid in Colorado and led an ambitious health study at the Urban Institute.  We discuss: How states use Medicaid to create entirely new delivery systems That...

When Claudia Williams started The Other 80 she was searching for evidence that whole person care – meaning the integration of social and medical care – is a viable model to bring more equity and health to all Americans.  We started with some big questions. Can we flip the US healthcare system, making it more compassionate, more effective and more focused on health? Can we better address pover...

For Dr. Clemens Hong, health is social justice work, rooted in the community-oriented primary care movement of the 1960s. He joins us for a powerful interview about on-the-ground implementation of whole person care in a county bigger than many countries. Dr. Hong leads community programs for LA County including housing supports, reentry and diversion programs, street-based outreach, and benefits n...

Nearly half of Americans have a family member or close friend who’s been addicted to drugs. And most are not getting the help they need. The US has a 94 percent treatment gap for substance use disorders. Treatments are expensive, ineffective, or they’re simply not available. Corbin Petro is on a mission to close this gap. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Eleanor Health, providing evidence-based wh...

Jacey Cooper, California’s Medicaid Director,  gives us an on-the-ground look at California’s pathbreaking CalAIM initiative that pairs intensive care management with access to a broad range of social services. It’s been a year since the program launched and Jacey reflects on how much communication, coordination, planning and agility was needed to implement a program of this size and breadth....

Sachin Jain is setting out to build a very different kind of company—a nationally scaled nonprofit health plan, grounded in Scan’s founding story of 1970s community activists seeking a new future of health for vulnerable communities. In the last two years the 4.5 star Medicare plan has announced a merger with Care Oregon, launched verticals focused on delivering health services to people experienc...

Former NIMH director and renowned neuroscientist Dr. Tom Insel joins Claudia to talk about the state of mental health in America today. The conversation dives into the challenges and opportunities for improvement, the potential of technology, and what it will take to scale integrated treatment approaches across the nation. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and le...

Two things push Medicaid to the front of every equity conversation. First, its scale and focus. Second, its bold moves to improve equity through coverage expansions and addressing social drivers of health. Claudia chats with Dr. Aditi Mallick about Medicaid’s three-part agenda to improve equity, implement whole person care and expand coverage. Dr. Mallick — the Chief Medical Officer for Medicaid &...

Abner Mason has spent decades working to reduce barriers to care faced by underserved people, who often experience harm and misunderstanding in their health encounters.  He joins us to talk about how to build trust in healthcare. It means slowing down to really understand and meet each person’s unique needs. That’s the work Abner leads as Founder and CEO of SameSky Health.  We discuss:&n...

Many investors and founders shy away from building Medicaid-focused companies. Andy Slavitt – policymaker, investor and ‘In the Bubble’ host – joins us to discuss why this is a huge mistake. Medicaid now covers 85 million Americans and is where the opportunities to build meaningful and high impact companies are the greatest. We talk about Andy’s work at Town Hall Ventures and his takeaways from le...

Investing in housing for Medicaid enrollees is one of the ways Dr. Bradley Gilbert has pioneered Whole Person Health in California. He’s an original population health thinker, from his start as a county public health officer to decades of service as CEO of one of the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care plans and his most recent role as Director of Health Care Services in California. Dr. Gilbert...

A move to whole person health in America is going to take a shift of the entire health ecosystem. In this episode, Claudia chats with Dr. Mini Kahlon, the founding Vice Dean of Health Ecosystem at Dell Medical School, about health beyond the clinic, the role of “traditional medical care” and medical schools in moving towards whole person health, and why we need big, visionary goals for the health...

Why is whole-person care so important? And, is it even possible to shift our current model in that direction? Former North Carolina Secretary of Health Dr. Mandy Cohen joins us to talk about why a shift to whole-person care is the right approach and how she generated bi-partisan support for North Carolina’s groundbreaking Healthy Opportunities Pilots which are providing food, housing and other ser...