Explore every episode of the podcast HIT Like a Girl Pod: Empowering Women in Health IT

Join us for a re-release of this powerful episode featuring Dr. Heather Irobunda, a featured speaker at the 2023 Women in Medicine Summit. Discover how her journey from the military to private practice and public community health has shaped her understanding of the healthcare divide. Learn about the challenges faced by marginalized individuals and the critical need for health literacy and education in today's evolving society. Hear how technology can democratize information and the importance of medical advocacy in addressing healthcare disparities.

In this episode, Joy engages in a compelling conversation with Vanessa Villaverde, Senior Program Investor at the California Healthcare Foundation. They explore the critical need for mental health services for children, particularly during the pandemic, and discuss innovative approaches to bridging gaps in healthcare access for underserved communities. Vanessa highlights the importance of storytelling in healthcare innovation, emphasizing how personal narratives can drive impactful change. The episode also delves into the Making Waves in Health Tech podcast initiative, which aims to simplify complex healthcare topics and promote culturally competent care. Episode Highlights [00:02:30] Overview of California's Healthcare Landscape [00:11:00] Mental Health Services for Children During the Pandemic [00:15:00] Addressing Gaps in Healthcare Access for Underserved Communities [00:18:30] The Role of Technology in Patient Care [00:21:45] The Power of Storytelling in Healthcare [00:22:28] Making Waves in Health Tech Podcast Initiative [00:25:21] Culturally Competent Mental Health Care Access [00:30:00] Future Directions in Healthcare Innovation Stay Connected with Vanessa Villaverde: LinkedIn California Health Care Foundation | LinkedIn

Join Joy Rios as she welcomes Brad Johnson and David Smith, authors of "Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women" and "Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace." Recorded at last year's Women in Medicine summit, this episode delves into the importance of male engagement in promoting gender diversity and inclusion.  Discover practical strategies for men to show up as allies, the benefits of diverse workplaces, and the personal and professional gains men can achieve by advocating for gender equity. Episode Highlights [00:02:37] Importance of Men Engaging in Gender Equity Work [00:09:44] Potential Penalties for Advocating for Gender Equity [00:12:30] Importance of Listening and Learning in Gender Equity Efforts [00:13:45] Addressing Fear in Men Mentoring Women [00:16:49] Eye-Opening Experiences of Gender Disparities in the Workplace Stay connected to Brad Johnson & David Smith: Brad Johnson | David Smith Workplace Allies | LinkedIn

Dr. Geri Landman is a pediatrician who recently founded a nonprofit, Moonshots for Unicorns, which is committed to curing curable single-gene disorders, like her daughter Lucy's. While each gene is unique, they all share the fact that these children are missing one single protein in their cells to function appropriately. Science exists to fix this; it just takes passion, focus, funding, and innovation to make a meaningful impact - one rare disease at a time. Listen in to hear more about Lucy, Moonshot’s mission, and about which digital health innovations Dr. Geri believes could have the most impact on rare disease research and treatment!

In this episode, Joy talks with Dr. Brittany Barreto, Co-Founder and Executive Director of FemTech Focus, Host of the FemTech Focus Podcast, and Co-Founder of Coyote Ventures. Every day Dr. Brittany Barreto dedicates her work to advance women’s health by equipping founders, investing in innovative ideas, and engaging key stakeholders to create better healthcare for women, females, and girls, an industry known as FemTech. She is an unconventional scientist, entrepreneur, and consultant that proves that anything is possible with hard work and heart.

In this special crossover episode, Kathryn Ayers Wickenhauser from Direct Trust interviews one of this year’s interoperability heroes and official Health IT Rockstar, Susan Clark. Susan has a talent for expert orchestration regarding data governance, social determinants of health, and interoperability, where she helps identify disparate and often disconnected components of healthcare and is constantly trying to bridge the gaps between them.  She also plays the bass guitar, so she qualifies as a legit rock star. She’s fun, innovative, and whip-smart. Enjoy! 

On this episode of HIT Like a Girl, Grace Vinton talks with Jane Myles, Vice President of Clinical Trial Innovation at Curebase, about how the time has come for the research community to take a page out of healthcare providers' playbooks and deliver care with a greater focus on the patient experience. Jane explains how a patient-centered view will help with improved trial compliance, better diversity, and more rapid trial completion. She further explains how patient experience has long been an oversight for the research community, and insights into how some leaders have been advocating for industry improvement in this area for decades.

In this special episode, Joy sits down with each of the speakers from the inaugural S.O.A.R. Conference, presented by Bluebird Leaders in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The event was created to support advancing women in health IT, which is a theme near and dear to our HIT Like a Girl pod hearts. A variety of topics were covered, ranging from the importance of personal branding, self-advocacy, measuring DEI, reframing failure into opportunity, making friends with the problem you’re trying to solve, and much more. We learned from industry experts and a very special tech-savvy teen. Enjoy! 00:46 - Victoria Pelletier: The Importance of Personal Branding 06:00 - Rebecca Woods: Mentorship 09:42 - Kristen Duell: Measuring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 14:35 - Stacy DiStefano: Reframing Failure into Opportunity 17:32 - Kat McDavitt: Making Friends with your Problem 20:35 - Kathryn Wetherby: Promoting Better Cultures within Technology 26:00 - Dr. Guinevere Stasio: The Energy You Bring 31:53 - Dr. Simran & Ed Marx: Differences Between Male & Female Leadership 36:56 - Olivia Van Ledtje: Making Technology More Accessible to Kids 42:22 - Lauren Friedrich: The Importance of Self Advocacy 48:46 - Dr. Bobbi Wegner: Creating Cohesion & Strong Teams

On this episode, Joy talks with Amy Moy, Co-CEO and Chief External Affairs Officer, at Essential Access Health. Amy leads the organization's federal and state policy efforts, strategic communications activities, and patient education and consumer awareness initiatives. Amy and Joy have known each other for more than 20 years. Amy helped organize a group of women from the Bay Area to attend the 2004 March for Women's Rights in Washington, D.C. to sound the alarm for the potential for Roe vs Wade to be overturned, which happened earlier this year. Amy shares how her own journey to motherhood was shaped by having a choice in her family planning and expresses how her daughter's generation brings her hope. Take a listen!

From nurse to informaticist to Chief Clinical Transformation Officer, in this episode of HITea with Grace, Cindy Gaines discusses the career journey that led her to her current position at Lumeon, a care orchestration platform.  Cindy shares with us her experience on the front lines of nursing and highlights the barriers to technology implementation and the healthcare industry’s many challenges and need for care orchestration now more than ever. With clinician and nurse burnout at an all-time high, can technology and automation realistically help?

On this episode of HIT Like a Girl, Grace Vinton talks with Anna Dover, PharmD, director of Product Management at FDB (First Databank), about her prescription for combatting the epidemic of alert fatigue that contributes to the industrywide problem of clinician stress and burnout. Dr. Dover tells us how to flip the script on medication decision support to eliminate the noise, increase patient centricity and improve safety.  The bottom line? Medication alerts need to get more relevant, meaningful, and actionable. Dr. Dover tells us how. Stay tuned!

We are excited to welcome Dr. Sonya Sloan to the podcast to talk about innovation and empowerment. She’s a traveling orthopedic surgeon, a locum tenens physician, an author, a speaker, and a mother. In her work across the U.S. for more than a decade, she has seen and treated just about everything.  She was the first African American female intern in general surgery and the first African American female orthopedic surgery resident at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. There are only 6% of women in orthopedic surgery and there are less than 100 African American women orthopedic surgeons in the country. This is around 0.7% of the 30,000 orthopedic surgeons currently practicing. Dr. Sloan currently serves the indigenous community at the Indian Health Service in New Mexico and shares her wisdom with us about what this community faces each day and where digital health could realistically fit in. She also sees great potential in the role that Virtual Reality (VR) headsets can play in improving orthopedic education. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Sloan!

When life throws you a curveball, it can be hard to know what to do next. For many of us, our mental and emotional health is closely linked to our sense of purpose. When the things we thought mattered fall to the wayside, it can be a major blow to our mental well-being. In this bonus episode, Kat McDavitt sits down with Natanya Wachtel about how to navigate a personal crisis when you're expected to be at your peak professional performance. Natanya is the Founding Partner of New Solutions Network, which includes The New Solutions Factory, a customer-behavior strategy group, and the Co-Founder of evrmore.io, an AI-powered app+platform for GenZ mental wellness.

In this episode, Joy Rios delves into the intricate world of healthcare with guest Aja Hardy, a seasoned professional with a diverse background in software development, marketing, and regulatory affairs for medical devices. Aja shares her unconventional journey, from initially aiming to become a doctor to finding her niche in the healthcare industry through opportunities like the American Hospital Association fellowship and a pivotal role at Cerner. The conversation touches on the challenges of balancing work and personal life, the significance of visibility and transparency in the healthcare sector, and the evolving landscape of regulatory processes for medical devices. Episode Highlights [00:01:23] Aja Hardy's Background and Experience [00:05:17] Transitioning to Regulatory Affairs [00:10:32] Balancing Work and Personal Life [00:15:20] Importance of Visibility and Transparency [00:20:42] Opportunity with Cerner [00:25:15] Learning and Contributing in Different Roles [00:31:37] Connecting with Aja Hardy Stay connected to Aja Hardy: LinkedIn | Twitter FDA | LinkedIn

To create a more diverse and inclusive tech world, we need to inspire and empower the next generation of female role models to pursue and develop their careers in technology and become innovators, leaders, and entrepreneurs. Rebecca Woods, Founder of Bluebird Tech Solutions and Bluebird Leaders is on a mission to do just that. In this episode, Joy and Rebecca talk about the lack of diversity in IT and computer science fields, and what she's doing to change that. Bluebird Leaders is hosting the inaugural SOAR Conference for women in health IT, where the agenda has been curated to inspire attendees to become agents for positive change. Register to attend before September 30 and save 10% with the promo code: HITLAG

Sobha Pisharody, Ph.D, is the Chief Strategy and Product Officer at InformedDNA, a genomics company. The company has built its expertise around understanding complex genomics, understanding the clinical outcomes, matching up which patients should get, which drug or which tests, and helping both patients and payers through that journey of getting to the right medication or the right treatment for the right patients. In this episode, Joy and Sobha talk about how, when, and why patients should broach this subject with their doctors, and how this might change in a post-Roe world.

Actionable, real-time, and precise data has the potential to improve countless inefficiencies that we see across the industry, and Mary Lantin, President and Chief Operating Officer at Diameter Health has made a career out of putting healthcare data to work. Mary speaks with us about the value of upcycled, clean, data across the care continuum, her journey that led her to Diameter Health, and how Availity’s recent acquisition of Diameter Health will help reduce provider administrative burnout and improve payer-provider collaboration. Thanks for joining us, Mary! 

In this episode, Joy sits down with Erica Olenski Johansen. Erica is a master community builder, healthcare innovation advisor, and perhaps most importantly, she's a caregiver to a son with cancer. She's also the Founding Executive Director of August's Artists, a nonprofit organization that facilitates a simple activity during a family's challenging healthcare experience - coloring on the hospital room door window with crayons. August's Artists helps pediatric healthcare patients and their families commemorate their hospital-door artwork as a way to celebrate some of the most formative and impactful moments in life. Listen in as she shares her journey.

In this episode, Dallas Barnes, Founder of Reya Health, talks with Joy about the company's user-focused digital contraceptive counseling tool. Her work helps people with ovaries navigate the birth control landscape, so they can feel confident and comfortable with their birth control journey. Based out of Canada, Reya is working hard to secure government funding to support indigenous people in rural areas with access to reproductive health services, among other audacious goals to affect change in the healthcare ecosystem.

Nurse Alice Benjamin, also known as America's Favorite Nurse, is the Chief Nursing Officer at Nurse.org and a medical contributor for NBC4 in Los Angeles. Much of her professional focus is on education and outreach to reach patients before they ever find themselves in a healthcare setting. She uses her platforms to teach about health and wellness issues, medical breakthroughs, and anything scientific to amplify it to her community. In this episode, Nurse Alice shares the variety of paths nurses can take on their career journey.

In this episode, Joy sits down with Risa Weisberg, Ph.D., Chief Clinical Officer, for BehaVR. Anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and substance abuse are among the most common problems for which individuals seek mental and behavioral health treatment. Risa shares how Virtual Reality can offer effective health interventions that model Cognitive Behavioral and acceptance and commitment-based therapies to change people's behavior in real life.

In this episode, Joy talks with Bethany Corbin, Senior Council at Nixon Gwilt law, and the FemTech practice lead. She helps female health technology companies build and scale so they can form and redefine healthcare delivery for women's health. Since the landscape for women's health has shifted dramatically recently, Bethany reviews several ways in which the Dobbs case will transform the healthcare industry and talks about how we can support women and ensure that they get access to the healthcare they need in this new environment.

It is a pleasure to welcome Marina Borukhovich to the podcast. As a CEO, Founder, Mom, and Cancer Survivor, Marina shares with us how her terrifying personal health journey inspired her to found YourCoach.Health, a full health coaching practice management platform. She is passionate about amplifying the role that health coaches bring to holistic care and demystifying digital health for the coaching community. Thanks for joining us, Marina!

Listen in as our host, Joy Rios and guest Elizabeth Ruzzo, Founder, and CEO of adyn - a company taking a precision medicine approach to birth control - absorb the news of the Supreme Court Decision to overturn Roe v Wade. In, this episode they share their concerns for people with uteruses seeking control over their bodies and the ways in which users of birth control can better understand their unique biology to select the type that will give them the least side effects.

In this episode, Joy Rios interviews Cate Navarrete, the founder and executive director of the Body Positive Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting body positivity and systemic equity for all bodies. Cate discusses the growth and impact of the organization, highlighting the challenges of retention and engagement within the chapters. She emphasizes the importance of knowledge and community in fostering body positivity and social justice awareness. The conversation delves into measuring success in promoting body positivity, and the potential impact of their work on a larger scale. Episode Highlights [00:00:00] Introduction by Joy Rios [00:13:00] The growth and impact of the Body Positive Alliance [00:13:30] Challenges of retention and engagement in the organization [00:16:17] Measuring success in promoting body positivity and social justice issues [00:22:42] The importance of knowledge and community in promoting body positivity [00:24:50] Potential impact of work on a larger scale Stay connected to Cate Navarrete: LinkedIn | Twitter Body Positive Alliance | LinkedIn

As anyone who has lived through a major disaster can attest, the aftermath of an emergency is often just as chaotic and dangerous as the event itself. Responding to a disaster requires care coordination across a large number of individuals and agencies.  In today's episode, we chat with Lauren Knieser, Senior Director at Audacious Inquiry, where AI technology is playing a vital role in making sure that care coordination efforts are as efficient and effective as possible.

In this episode, Grace Vinton asks Joy Rios, our primary podcast host, to sit in the hot seat of the HIT Like a Girl pod. Joy opens up about how she got started in health IT back in 2010 and what motivated her to shine the spotlight on women who work in the industry in 2018. Spoiler alert: she turned a complaint about women not getting enough industry credit into an opportunity to create a supportive community. Grace and Joy share some HITLAG highlights and tease some exciting things to come.

COVID brought telehealth into the mainstream, but most providers still underutilize the technology, failing to apply it in ways that can truly enhance their practices. Let’s welcome Juli Stover, Chief Strategy Officer at eVisit. Juli speaks with us about the state of the industry, reimbursement models, and policies, and presents a new controversial way in which hospitals and health systems should be looking at and approaching telehealth strategy. She’s an expert on ways providers should leverage telehealth to increase efficiency and revenue. Thanks for joining us, Juli!

In this episode of HITeaWithGrace, Patty Hayward, VP of Strategy for Healthcare and Life Sciences at Talkdesk, discusses the effects of consumerism on healthcare. 78% of respondents to a recent industry survey said they want a choice of how they interact with their doctors and care teams. Healthcare is about people taking care of people; not about making healthcare consumers feel like transactions. How you communicate with your hospital and health system can make all the difference in the world. The question is, how can innovation help?  Grace had a fantastic time learning from Patty about how she is working to make this goal a reality. 

In this episode, Kat McDavitt interviews Dr. Cerise Elliott, the Program Director for the Clinical Interventions and Diagnostics branch of the Division of Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Elliot tells us about her one big thing: increasing diversity and representation and research and she talks about how having the courage and cold-calling local universities as a high school, sophomore in Omaha, put her on the path to completing her Ph.D. in neuroscience.

Our very own Grace Vinton had the great opportunity to chat with Dr. Esther Kim on this episode of HITea today!  From academic to registered dietician, to ACO program director, Dr. Esther Kim is now the Executive Director of Digital Health Innovation at Mass General Brigham. She leads a new team accelerating innovative healthcare technology pilots across the health system. As a leader in healthcare digital transformation, Esther shares with us the types of digital health technologies that have made a strong impact on their health system and innovations that make her hopeful for the future (hint, true AI, and more). She shares with us the relationship between new payment models and technology adoption to improve patient access to information. Esther strongly believes in the importance and promise of whole-person care and the industry is lucky to have her leading the charge!

In this episode, Joy chats with Angela Lanning, COO, Informatics and Technology Services at Premier. She's responsible for their product strategy and operations, which includes implementations, training, customer support, and product delivery. Premier aggregates data from multiple systems, cleans and normalizes it, applies risk adjustment, and then presents it back to customers so they can see their performance. They also help bring together hundreds of hospitals to help them strategize how to improve their performance on a much larger scale.

In this episode, Joy sits down with Rory Stanton, CEO at Aila Health, which is an AI-enabled health management platform that empowers patients with complex autoimmune diseases to receive personalized health at home. Her work helps these patients understand and manage their symptoms with online education, supportive communities, and holistic care from board-certified physicians. We met Rory through the HITLAB NYC femtech initiative.

In this episode, recorded at HIMSS22, Joy sits down with Amy Conner to talk about her career journey in healthcare. From helping to incorporate the HPV test into women's annual screenings to identify more patients developing cervical cancer to working to introduce new clinical quality measures to identify people with uteruses who may be at risk of having a spontaneous, preterm birth. Amy is also a mom to three sons who are figuring out through her example that women's health issues affect men too.

In this episode, Joy chats with Hila Goldman-Aslan, the CEO and Co-founder of DIA Imaging Analysis, a women-led organization, based out of Israel. Her work focuses on ultrasounds, which we typically associate with babies. However, ultrasounds can look at the heart, liver, lungs, and much more. Hila's company centers its attention on the cardiac and bladder ultrasound space and leverages AI to help make user analysis of ultrasound images smarter and more accurate. This helps take the subjectivity out of the ultrasound analysis process, giving more time back to clinicians and healthcare providers.

In this episode, Joy welcomes Julie Frey from Wolters Kluwer Health, who heads the Provider product division. They explore Wolters Kluwer's role in healthcare, focusing on clinical decision support tools like UpToDate, which provide clinicians with timely and accurate information at the point of care. Julie highlights the company's mission to alleviate clinician burnout by empowering them with efficient tools and discusses the future of healthcare, emphasizing the importance of connecting clinicians and patients for holistic care. Episode Highlights [00:01:01] Overview of Wolters Kluwer Health and its global presence [00:02:04] Clinical decision support and patient engagement tools [00:06:16] Clinician challenges and the importance of patient engagement in healthcare [00:16:33] Julie Frey's journey into healthcare, starting from corporate strategy to a focus on health division projects [00:19:34] Julie Frey's motivation and excitement about the intrinsic purpose in healthcare [00:19:59] Ways to connect with Julie Frey and Wolters Kluwer Health Stay connected to Julie Frey: LinkedIn | Twitter Wolters Kluwer | LinkedIn

In this episode, Joy chats with Alana McGolrick, Chief Nursing Officer at PeriGen, a perinatal decision support system. Their AI-powered early warning system gets applied to the laboring patient and helps read the fetal heart events, trends, uterine activity, progress in labor and also helps to graph and trend the maternal vital signs, which helps clinicians at the bedside with decision making related to the patient. Her work is focused on reducing preventable maternal and newborn deaths using technology and AI to support labor and delivery activities. In this conversation, she shares how the PeriGen Vigillence product removes the bias that a doctor or nurse might have when looking at the mom or the fetal heartbeat by providing objective assessments.

In this episode, recorded at HIMSS22, Joy sits down with Anna Basevich, the VP of Enterprise Partnerships at Arcadia. She speaks our love language by helping healthcare organizations aggregate and use data to improve population health. There's magic in showing stakeholders close-to-real-time data on performance metrics that matter to them. One example is closing care gaps in breast cancer screenings and then showing the organization how to engage the population that needs support. Brilliant! Impactful!

In this episode, Joy chats with Stephanie Hillmann, the Senior Executive and Principal Owner of Prairiewood Consulting, based out of Seattle. She and Joy had a heartfelt conversation that touched on family dynamics, supporting the mental health of our youth, working to eliminate gender bias, and calling for more love and empathy in healthcare. Overall, not only does she have a wealth of knowledge, but she's also happy to share it.

Stacy Hurt is probably best known as one of the fiercest patient advocates in healthcare. But she's so much more than that. She's a patient engagement consultant, survivorship activist, digital health strategist, and keynote speaker. As an award-winning pharma executive who lives as a healthcare consumer every day, she is also a caregiver for her intellectually and developmentally disabled son as well as a stage four colorectal cancer survivor herself. In this episode, she shares her story and best advice.

In this bonus episode, recorded at HIMSS22, Joy sits down with Dr. Monica Bolbjerg, CEO and Founder of Qure4U. Her work focuses on how to use technology to improve patient and provider interaction when they're not together. She has bragging rights to the world's first patient portal that was put in place in Denmark and boasts 30 percent of the country's population was using the platform back in 2001. Her work helps strategize how to providers can improve communication and engagement along a patient's complete journey - whether that is through text messaging, an app, or however the patient prefers to be reached.

Dr. Shika Pappoe, Chief Medical Officer at Strive Health, is a nephrologist with a blended background in medicine, public health, and business administration. In this episode, she and Joy Rios talk in-depth about kidney disease and Dr. Pappoe's work at one of the country's largest safety-net hospitals, where she's able to focus her energies on providing care to underserved communities. One in three adults in the U.S. is at risk for chronic kidney disease, many of whom do not understand the full spectrum of the disease and how it impacts themselves or their loved ones. Dr. Pappoe works to get resources and education into the hands of both providers and the general public to increase awareness of chronic kidney disease.

In this episode, we learn from Amy Divaraniya, CEO and Founder of Oova. With Oova's at-home hormone testing kit, women with irregular cycles who are trying to conceive can find out where they are in their cycle, whether or not they have released an egg yet, how many days post ovulation they are, as well as the concentration levels for both luteinizing hormone and progesterone. That means it’s the first to pinpoint the fertile window and confirm ovulation in one test. Oova users get a customized daily action plan and are empowered with information to share with their healthcare providers to really take control of their conception journey. Amy tells us all about it!

In this episode, recorded at HIMSS22, Joy sits down with Lauren Stahl, VP, and Head of Sales at Komodo Health. They talk about Komodo Health uses technology to map out disease burdens at scale for more than 325 million unique patient lives in the U.S. and how the company's software applications, solutions, and analytic platforms service a variety of healthcare stakeholders. They basically aggregate and harmonize data from the entire U.S. population to extract insights to empower healthcare companies to be the best version of themselves.

In this episode, Dr. Alicia Jackson, Founder of Evernow, sits down with Joy to discuss menopause. More than 55 million women in the U.S. are experiencing menopause symptoms, but 75% of those who seek care don't get it. Evernow is a modern startup using its group of women scientists and doctors to help normalize the way we view a woman's changing hormones as we age, and what that means for our overall health.

In this episode, Grace Vinton sits down with Amanda Edwards, Program Manager, Digital Transformation and Innovation, at Availity, the nation’s largest real-time health information network that works to solve communication challenges in healthcare by creating a richer, more transparent exchange of information among health plans, providers, and technology partners. Amanda discusses the path that led her to where she is today, what it means to be a female leader and the challenges that have come along the way. She expresses her passion for creating patient-centered workflows that are being used to address administrative burnout. She also dives into the world of digital transformation and the acceptance of technology that was sparked by the pandemic, where we learned more about how practices should go about identifying and introducing new opportunities that reduce the stress of the office staff while improving processes.

In the final episode of the Techquity Series, Luis Belen and Tracy Wang delve into the realm of health equity and technology, showcasing the transformative power of data-driven initiatives. Tracy Wang, Director of Digital Solutions at Elevance Health, shares insights into a groundbreaking project aimed at addressing health disparities through innovative data visualization and analytics. The conversation highlights the crucial role of community engagement and the strategic use of data to drive impactful interventions. Luis and Tracy explore the challenges of building trust in underserved communities and the importance of aligning priorities with community needs to maximize the impact of health equity efforts. Want to learn more about the inspiring projects making healthcare more equitable? Head over to hitlikeagirlpod.com/techquity Episode Highlights 00:07:29 - Introduction by Luis Belen and Tracy Wang 00:08:22 - Recognition of Tracy Wang's Initiatives 00:08:55 - Description of the Project's Objectives 00:13:46 - Importance of Data Visualization and Engagement 00:26:52 - Discussion on Trust in Underserved Communities 00:27:53 - Engagement Strategies and ROI in Health Equity Efforts 00:40:09 - Value of Centralized Data for Addressing Disparities

In this episode, Joy sits down with Ellen James, Director of Research and Development at Small Pharma, a neuro-pharmaceutical company that is currently developing a psychedelic-assisted therapy for the treatment of mental health conditions. Small Pharma is one of the few psychedelic companies working with DMT, a naturally occurring psychedelic tryptamine found in plants and the brain of mammals. Scientific evidence suggests DMT offers the potential for rapid-acting and long-lasting antidepressant effects. Small Pharma is leading the world's first DMT clinical trial and Ellen tells us all about it!

In this episode, recorded at HIMSS22, Joy sits down with Rodina Bizri-Baryak, Director of Patient Access and Technology at Tegria. They discuss how growing up in Lebanon during a civil war influenced Rodina's perspective on the world and her place in it. When she discovered how improving processes within healthcare settings can support patients, her career journey became more solidified. At Tegria, she works to eliminate technological barriers - from scheduling appointments to coordinating care across multidisciplinary care teams - so patients can more easily access the care they need.

In this episode, Joy sits down with Anna Lindow, CEO and CoFounder of Brave Health, a virtual behavioral health provider and engagement platform. Her piece of the health IT puzzle solves for behavioral health outcomes for Medicaid beneficiaries. Brave Health provides telehealth-enabled counseling, therapy, psychiatry, and medication management, including medication-assisted treatment to treat a range of conditions across the spectrum of mental health and substance use disorder. As the CEO, Anna helps some of the most vulnerable communities -- such as foster children -- experience the benefits that come from maintaining continuity of care and consistent relationship with their healthcare providers.