Some of the best business opportunities in health care will involve the development of technologies that analyze and address the factors that contribute to health disparities. These opportunities have the potential to help people, especially those who remain underserved or completely underserved by the current health care system, maintain their health through proactive and holistic care, reducing the need for doctor visits and hospital.
Social drivers of health are the aspects of life that affect people’s health outside of health care itself. They account for up to 80% of an individual’s health.
Social factors include where you live, the condition of your housing, the food you have access to, your transportation options, how much education you’ve received, your financial security, and more. For example, if your living conditions mean you don’t have close access to healthy food or affordable transportation to a better grocery store, you don’t have access to a safe place to exercise, and you don’t get much sleep because of your way of life. conditions, you’re much more likely to eat poorly, get stressed, get sick, and end up in an emergency room.
Addressing the social drivers of health is often left to government programs and policies, which are subject to political winds and lack innovation or speed. Therefore, unhealthy lifestyles as a result of unhealthy environments remain a huge problem. But huge problems are fertile ground for world-changing innovative founders to create new companies.
My wife, Andréa, and I have seen firsthand the impact of social drivers. After I retired as CEO of Merck, she and I established a clinic to bring quality health care to my old neighborhood in a poorer section of Philadelphia. We quickly realized that many of the residents’ health problems were the result of their lack of access to fresh, healthy food. In fact, this neighborhood is what could be called a food desert. With little access to healthy food, people in the community must rely on processed and fatty foods and are more likely to eventually develop diseases like diabetes and clogged arteries.
What the research shows
Social drivers of health negatively affect low-income and minority populations at much higher rates because they are more likely to live in neighborhoods without good supermarkets; they are more likely to live in poor conditions; and they are more likely to forego preventive care for health and financial literacy reasons.
Nearly 10% of black Americans do not have health insurance, compared to 5% of white Americans, and the lack of insurance leads people to delay medical care until the problem becomes serious. Covid-19 has also made it clear that health care remains scarce in rural America. On the same subject : A neuroscientist recommends 5 books to help you cut loose at work. More than 180 rural hospitals have closed in the past 10 years, forcing many small-town residents to travel for hours to see a doctor.
Improving the social drivers of health has typically been a matter for public health departments. There have been some notable successes: effective sewage systems, safer drinking water, reduced air pollution, anti-smoking campaigns, and more have all added years to the life expectancy of everyone, including marginalized people.
But the best way to understand and address social factors and health inequities today is by creating companies that are committed to solving these problems profitably. No company can solve everything; It will require an ecosystem of interoperable companies and technologies, and radical collaboration with existing health systems.
Several companies are leading the way, including Cityblock Health, a General Catalyst portfolio company, for which I work. Founded in 2017, Cityblock uses software and partnerships with insurers and hospitals to provide health care to low-income people. The company is now worth more than $6 billion.
Another is dad. The company realized that when seniors who live alone have some company and a little help in their lives, they are less likely to get sick and require expensive medical care. So Papa created a platform to match young adults with older people and uses the platform to offer services like telemedicine and chronic care management that help older people live at home and stay out of hospitals.
Here are some of the opportunities I think business founders looking to address health inequities should consider:
Collecting data on social drivers
Data is key to health assurance: a new category of health care that uses technology to help everyone stay healthy and manage their conditions so they rarely need “sick care” in a hospital or doctor’s office.
While electronic medical records contain health data such as prescriptions, heart rate, and lab tests, they contain almost no information about the social drivers of health, or data connecting them to other medical conditions. Read also : National Minority Mental Health Month | VA Washington DC Health Care. In other words, medical professionals have no empirical evidence showing how their patients’ social needs affect their health.
According to a study published in Health Affairs, healthcare professionals “often fly blind, without data on the social needs of their patients and the capabilities of potential community partners.”
A company that can collect data on the social drivers of health, connect it to health outcomes, and analyze the data to find better ways for people to stay healthy and manage chronic conditions would be enormously valuable. I could imagine a pharmaceutical company wanting to be a customer, helping them understand why drugs are more or less successful in certain populations. Health insurers would also find this information valuable.
While creating such a dataset would certainly be challenging, the future of healthcare really depends on someone getting it right.
Connecting health care to social services
There is an alarming lack of any kind of consolidated database of entities that provide social services that can improve health. To see also : The Texas GOP calls homosexuality an ‘abnormal lifestyle choice’ on the platform. A doctor treating a patient who has diabetes and lives in a food desert, for example, can’t open an app and find a subsidized fresh food delivery service that could help their patient eat better.
Achieving health guarantee means linking all aspects of health. Doctors should be able to prescribe a health-enhancing social service as easily as they can prescribe a pill. America needs companies that make it happen.
Improving health literacy
In my old neighborhood, some people with diabetes don’t show up at the clinic until their condition is so bad that they need to have a foot amputated due to diabetes-related circulation problems. A tool that can educate and encourage disadvantaged people to get screened for breast and colon cancer or diabetes or heart health would be extremely beneficial. Many economically disadvantaged people simply don’t know enough about their health and health care options to get the help they need before conditions become serious.
I see a need for a company that creates a health literacy app targeting underserved populations. The “well-worried” don’t need this: they tend to research (perhaps over-research!) their health conditions and have easy access to medical care. But people who aren’t so lucky need guidance that they feel applies to them.
More virtual care
It is simply not possible to train enough doctors and build enough hospitals to provide easy access to care for all Americans. Quality care is especially out of reach for those living in inner cities and rural towns. The solution, in this era of mobile devices and cloud computing, is virtual care.
Of course, telemedicine already exists. And during the early days of Covid-19, it seemed like it would go mainstream. But he hasn’t. Maybe it’s like the early years of video conferencing, when apps like WebEx were used only occasionally until the pandemic and Zoom collided and made video calls as common as voice calls. The brilliance of Zoom lies in making it robust and easy to use. We need Zoom-like advances in telemedicine and business models that make it work for rural and inner-city populations.
Our mission at General Catalyst is to partner with founders to bring to life startups that address the social drivers of health and health disparities. Health insurance companies will shape the future of our collective health and wellness, bringing technologies and solutions that enable proactive, holistic care that is truly accessible to all and at the service of our broader society.
Ken Frazier is president of health insurance initiatives at General Catalyst, a venture capital firm, and the current CEO and former CEO of Merck. He is also the co-founder and co-chairman of OneTen, a coalition of organizations committed to upskilling, hiring, and promoting one million African Americans in family-supporting jobs.
