Olivia Kelly is CEO and co-founder of WellStart Health, the fabulously amazing startup that I also co-founded. So everything I'm going to say about her is totally unbiased.
Olivia and I have been jetsetting this spring, attending healthcare-related conferences in exotic locations like Washington, DC, and Raleigh, NC. And because we're trying to take a "systems approach" to solving our chronic-disease fueled healthcare crisis, the conferences we attend are quite diverse in goal, scope, and attendees.
In fact, I'm almost positive that Olivia and I are the only elements in the intersection set of the World Health Care Congress (WHCC) and the Plant-Based Prevention of Disease Conference (P-POD).
Odd, really, because both groups share the same goals: improving health and rationalizing healthcare. But their agendas and focus are on two completely different planets, and those planets may be orbiting entirely different stars.
WHCC focuses on the business of healthcare. Issues like population health analytics, stoploss insurance, direct contracting, value-based billing, reference-based pricing, and other really important concepts that have the same effect on normal people as an equine dose of Ambien.
While P-POD addresses the role of plant-based nutrition in mitigating, reversing, and preventing chronic disease, and reducing the human and financial costs of healthcare.
But the twain don't meet very often.
When P-POD ended, I sat down with Olivia to talk about this chasm. And what can be done to bridge it, and bring all good people into alignment as we deploy our collective energy to solve this mess.
We talk about the difference between primary care (what the WHCC folks love) and pre-primary care (which the P-POD people love). About the link between physical and mental health. About the widespread ignorance about the power of lifestyle to change individual health trajectories.
And about what WellStart Health is currently up to, and how (if you so choose) you can support our mission.