Tag Archives: Childrens Health

Inside the Impact Board: How Katya Hancock Supports Youth Wellbeing in the Digital Age

July 11, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsChildrens Health, Digital Health, Health Moonshot Impact Board, Health Moonshots, Impact Board, Innovation, Katya Hancock, Logan Plaster, mental health, Mental Health and Happiness, mental wellness, non-profit, nonprofit, Teen Health, wellness, Young FuturesNicole Kinsey

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This week on StartUp Health NOW, we explore youth wellbeing in the digital age with Katya Hancock, Founding Executive Director of Young Futures and a member of StartUp Health’s Health Moonshot Impact Board.

After 10 years as part of the StartUp Health executive team, Hancock brings her experience to this innovative non-profit focused on helping young people thrive online. We’ll move beyond the “screen time villain” narrative and explore real solutions for navigating the digital world’s tensions. We’ll discuss Young Futures’ first million-dollar funding challenge, tackling loneliness, social connection, and wellbeing. Inspired by the Surgeon General’s call to action, they’re empowering youth-led efforts alongside established organizations.

Focus on Youth Wellbeing: Young Futures aims to improve youth wellbeing and mental health, especially in marginalized communities. The organization seeks to shift the narrative from focusing on challenges to providing practical solutions.
Innovative Support for Nonprofits: The organization hosts funding challenges to support innovative nonprofits working to improve youth well-being. The first challenge, called The Lonely Hearts Club, focused on addressing loneliness and social connection.
Building a Collaborative Ecosystem: Like StartUp Health, Young Futures brings together grantees in an ecosystem to collaborate and support each other. This approach helps create a stronger network of organizations working towards common goals.
Real-World Applications: Examples of supported organizations include Hip Hop Into Learning, which helps kids express themselves and find community through hip hop, and Sesame 3G, which connects seniors, teens, and preschoolers for mentoring and social-emotional learning.
Challenges and Opportunities: Hancock emphasizes the importance of addressing the digital tension young people face and providing them with the tools to navigate the digital world healthily. She also discusses the need for nonprofit leaders to adopt practices from the for-profit startup world, such as long-term goal setting and effective communication with funders.
Supporting StartUp Health: Hancock expresses her commitment to ensuring young people are part of the conversation in healthcare. She appreciates StartUp Health’s model and media presence, which can help raise awareness about youth mental health and integrate it into broader health discussions.
Personal Insights and Future Goals: Hancock shares her personal journey and how her work with StartUp Health and Young Futures has influenced her views on technology and parenting. She envisions Young Futures becoming more of an entertaining media company to engage and support young people effectively.

Join us for a dive into the future of youth and technology!

If you’re interested in the latest on how to help teens thrive in the digital age, follow the Young Futures Newsletter and their LinkedIn page.

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Neolth Teams Up with NBA Star Kenny Thomas to Bring Mental Health Tools to Kids

November 2, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedChildrens Health, Health Moonshot, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Katherine Grill, Kenny Thomas, Logan Plaster, mental health, Mental Health & Happiness, Mental Health and Happiness, mentalhealthawareness, NBA, Neolth, Teen HealthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (33.8MB)

According to some estimates, out of the HHS, nearly 50% of kids have experienced some kind of mental health challenge. And not just anxiety about an upcoming test or depression over a breakup, but persistent feelings that interfere with daily activities.

Health innovation companies have been on the case for years, including many from the StartUp Health community. They’re tackling the science – like what’s the best way to treat mental health challenges in teens – and they’re also tackling engagement. You can have the best tools in the world after all, but if a young person doesn’t want to get help, it’ll never go anywhere.

Enter Katherine Grill, PhD, CEO & Co-founder of Neolth, one of our guests on this podcast episode. She’s taken her doctorate in behavioral neuroscience and her experience as a clinician, combined with hundreds of interviews with young people, in order to build a platform that meets kids where they’re at – offering self-guided mental health support in a variety of forms and flavors.

Joining the podcast with us is former pro basketball player, Kenny Thomas. After spending 11 seasons in the NBA, Thomas became an entrepreneur and community advocate, with a focus on youth experiencing financial hardship via his own foundation. And now he’s throwing his influence behind Neolth in order to help young people, particularly those involved in sports, gain access to mental health services.

On this StartUp Health NOW episode, we’ll cover the ins and outs of the Neolth platform as well as some of Dr. Grill’s strategy behind working with a brand ambassador, which is somewhat unique in the world of early-stage health startups.

Let’s get into it.

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How These Two Founders Are Upgrading Maternal Health Through Cultural Competence and Remote Monitoring

April 27, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedAnish Sebastian, babyscripts, Childrens Health, cultural competence, Health, health equity, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Healthcare, Jade Kearney, Logan Plaster, maternal health, remote patient monitoring, She Matters, womens healthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:52 — 21.9MB)

Today in the United States, we do an entirely poor job of taking care of our pregnant mothers. If you look at statistics like maternal morbidity and mortality, it’s been going up. And, through the pandemic, it’s only gone downhill. We’re one of the worst – actually the worst – of any advanced country.

Welcome back to StartUp Health NOW, the podcast where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and innovators who are transforming health.

Today we’ve got two very special guests on the show talking about one extremely important topic: maternal health. This is a topic that has been front and center in health news lately and not for good reasons. In spite of all our progress in healthtech, the US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world.

The World Health Organization reports that a maternal death occurred almost every two minutes in 2020.

What’s worse, maternal health brings to light racial health inequities in a stark and disturbing way. According to the CDC, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women.

But we’re not here just to talk about the problem. Our guests are two Health Transformers who have dedicated their lives to changing the maternal health story.

First, you’ll get to hear from Jade Kearney, CEO & Founder of She Matters, a new platform that trains doctors in culturally-competent care so that – among other things – Black women are heard and understood during childbirth. They also created a virtual community for moms to get support and improve the health outcomes for Black mothers.

Next, we’ll have a conversation with Anish Sebastian, CEO & Co-founder of Babyscripts. Babyscripts is a long-time member of our community that is bringing virtual care and remote monitoring into the pregnancy and postpartum journey so that more women get the care they need when and where they need it most.

Listen in for their stories and solutions for upgrading maternal health.

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Lactation Lab Gets FDA Breakthrough Device Designation to Help Babies Get the Nutrition They Need

June 21, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsChildrens Health, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Lactation Lab, Logan Plaster, Moonshots, Stephanie Canale, womens healthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:34 — 31.6MB)

Our guest this week is Stephanie Canale, MD, the CEO & Founder of Lactation Lab, which StartUp Health backed in 2019.

As a family doctor and as a mother, Dr. Canale saw firsthand the challenges faced by new moms when it comes to feeding their babies. What she saw again and again was that mothers simply didn’t have information about their own breastmilk. Was it low in certain nutrients? Would the child benefit from a supplement? Why, she wondered, was there so much guesswork about something so essential to infant thriving? So, she came up with a testing kit that analyzes breast milk to show exactly what nutrition their infant is getting, allowing mothers to replenish anything that is deficient.

We dialed up Dr. Canale this week for two reasons. One was to get her take on the current infant formula shortage, since she works so closely with new parents. But also, in exciting news, Lactation Lab has just received FDA Breakthrough designation for a device they’ve built that’s being used in hospitals to make sure that the most at-risk babies get the nutrients they need to grow and thrive. Dr. Canale explains all about it in our interview and how this FDA Breakthrough Device designation has changed her company’s trajectory in interesting ways.

Learn more and connect with the team at Lactation Lab.

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Two Founders Transforming Children’s Health

November 2, 2021UncategorizedChildrens Health, Childrens healthcare, Danny Hui, disability care, Dr. Sandy Whitehouse, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshot Series, Health Moonshot Update, Health Moonshots, India Edwards, Logan Plaster, sameview, Sandy Whitehouse, StartUp Health, Tickit healthStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:57 — 24.7MB)

This special episode is part of our monthly Health Moonshot series. Each month we take one of StartUp Health’s 12 audacious health goals and highlight founders working to make the impossible a reality. Now, we’re talking about Children’s Health. Hosts Logan Plaster and India Edwards discuss two entrepreneurs from the StartUp Health portfolio who have developed incredible technology to help advance children’s healthcare. Dr. Sandy Whitehouse, CEO, Co-founder, and Chief Medical Officer of Tickit Health, a startup that’s based in Vancouver, works with educational, clinical, and youth service experts around the world to capture personal information from individuals via digitally empathetic surveys and assessments and other management tools to collect data to address the rise of stress, bullying, substance use, and other risky behaviors in youth. Danny Hui, the CEO & Founder of sameview, a startup out of Sydney, Australia, is working to bring teamwork into disability care.

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Introducing the Smartphone Epinephrine Injector, by Detroit-Based Startup Alerje

May 11, 2021Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, Startups, UncategorizedAlerje, Allergies, Childrens Health, epi pen, Health Moonshot Update, Javier Evelyn, Logan PlasterStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:22 — 29.4MB)

For some people, allergies are an inconvenience. But for millions of people around the world – particularly children – severe allergies are a major health concern. Eat the wrong thing and you could go into anaphylactic shock! They also seem to be getting worse. Tackling this growing problem is our guest on this episode, Javier Evelyn, the CEO and Founder of Alerje, which joined StartUp Health in 2020. Javier combined his personal experience suffering from severe allergies with his knowledge as a software developer to create an app and a device that administers epinephrine, in order to make life a little easier and a little safer for folks with bad allergies. In our interview we’ll get into Javier’s story, what he’s built, and how this year the Detroit-based startup got a boost from Google.

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Helen Egger, MD, Director, Child Study Center, NYU Langone Health

September 4, 2019UncategorizedChildrens Health, mental health, Unity StoakesStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:37 — 9.7MB)

It’s back to school week in the US. In this episode, StartUp Health sits down with Dr. Helen Egger, Director of the Child Study Center at NYU Langone Health to learn how digital tech and data science are improving how and when we identify mental health problems that children are having

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#205: Tim Verduin, PhD, Director of Technology and Innovation, NYU Langone

September 26, 2018UncategorizedChildrens Health, mental health, Unity StoakesStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:45 — 8.9MB)

Tim Verduin, PhD, Director of Technology and Innovation at NYU Langone Health, digs into some of the exciting work he is focusing on in adolescent mental health care. He addresses the challenges in accessing care for these children and how technologies, particularly mobile technology, can be a tool in closing those gaps.

WATCH MORE NOW EPISODES: https://www.startuphealth.com/startup-health-now

Location: NYU Langone Health Tech Symposium in New York, NY

#199 Dr. Achiau Ludomirsky, NYU School of Medicine

August 15, 2018UncategorizedChildrens Health, Unity StoakesStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:14 — 10.3MB)

Achiau Ludomirsky, MD, Associate Chair of Pediatrics, NYU School of Medicine, chats with President of StartUp Health, Unity Stoakes
WATCH MORE NOW EPISODES: https://www.startuphealth.com/startup-health-now

Location: NYU Langone Health Tech Symposium in New York, NY

# 192: Helen Egger, MD, Director, Child Study Center, NYU Langone Health

July 16, 2018UncategorizedChildrens Health, Unity StoakesStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:37 — 9.7MB)

Helen Egger, MD, Director, Child Study Center, NYU Langone Health, chats with President of StartUp Health, Unity Stoakes
WATCH MORE NOW EPISODES: https://www.startuphealth.com/startup-health-now

Location: NYU Langone Health Tech Symposium in New York, NY