Episode #143: Solving a Healthcare Inequity for 57 Million Women – with Joanna Strober, CEO & Co-founder of Midi Health

Friends, The problem of inequity in women’s health is a hugely disturbing one, particularly in American healthcare. For example – the disparity in maternal-fetal mortality & outcomes among Black women compared to White women in our country is an egregious example of a long-standing unsolved inequity. To put it plainly, it’s a shocking disparity and one that has to be addressed and eliminated.   In this dialogue we are introduced to another shocking inequity in women’s health. The issue is menopause, and I have to admit that I was unaware of the enormity of this unaddressed issue, and its debilitating impact on literally tens of millions of women each year. As always, our main focus here will not be on the problem, but more so on a solution that a courageous group of leaders have deployed to create a new and more humanistic approach to healthcare in our country.   Joanna Strober is the CEO of Midi Health.  Prior to Midi, Joanna founded Kurbo Health, a digital therapeutic for childhood obesity that she grew to serve tens of thousands of adolescents worldwide and sold to Weight Watchers in 2018. Prior to following her passion for digital health, Joanna spent fifteen years making investments in venture capital and private equity. Joanna is also the co-author of Getting to 50/50, a best selling book written to help parents thrive in the workforce after having children. Joanna received her BA in Political Science from University of Pennsylvania and holds a JD from University of California, Los Angeles where she was UCLA Law Review editor. In this episode, we’ll discover: How Joanna Strober personally discovered one of the great hidden inequities in American healthcare – an issue that is impacting nearly 60 million women. How painful and debilitating menopausal symptoms can be, and how these symptoms can be mis-disagnosed and mis-treated by well-intentioned providers. The impact menopause has on the professional lives of tens of millions of women in our country, and its negative impact on corporate America. The evidence-based, expert-supported, consumer-oriented & hyper-focused model of care that Joanna & her colleagues have created to address the problem of menopause in America. How Midi Health can be a synergistic and collaborative partner with providers and healthcare systems. A number of summary learnings are well worth reviewing: Nearly 60 million women in the USA are in the menopausal age range. The symptoms are incredibly debilitating and are often missed and misdiagnosed by providers, leading to costly testing as well as inappropriate treatments. It’s not hard to see how these symptoms could be confused for other issues, as they include: migrainous headaches