MedCity FemFwd: Inside Springboard Enterprises and Accenture’s New Women’s Health Report

Welcome back to another episode of MedCity FemFwd, a podcast dedicated to discussing the breakthroughs and challenges in women’s health. In this episode, we’re joined by Julia Lasater, management consulting senior analyst at Accenture, and Amani Bright, senior program manager at Springboard Enterprises.

Accenture and Springboard Enterprises recently released the second part of their State of Women’s Health report. Lasater and Bright discuss the key takeaways in this episode.

Here is an AI-generated transcript of the episode.

Marissa Plescia: Welcome back to MedCity FemFwd. I’m Marissa, a reporter from MedCity News. Accenture and Springboard Enterprises have been partners for several years now on an initiative to advance Women’s Health Innovation. Through this partnership, the two companies recently released the second part of its report on the state of women’s health.

Here to talk about the report, we have Amani Bright of Springboard Enterprises and Julia Lasater from Accenture.

Hi, Amani and Julia, thank you so much for joining MedCity FemFwd. Hi. Nice to be here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, of course. Um, so maybe just to start, why don’t you each just tell me a little bit about yourselves and your organizations? Uh, Amani, I’ll start with you on that. 

Amani Bright: Sure. Uh, I’m Amani Bright. I’m a senior program manager at Springboard Enterprises.

Um, we’ve been around 25 years and we are an organization whose main mission is to accelerate the growth of women-led companies and healthcare technology and retail tech. Um, our programs we typically run two are healthcare and technology focused and women’s health focused. Great. And then Julia, how about you?

Julia Lasater: Sure. Uh, I’m Julia Lasater. I’m a senior analyst at Accenture working within our life sciences industry. Um, and I got involved last year. We have a group at Accenture that is kinda working on women’s health, both on the US side and the UK side. So we have put together this team and, and have been working with Springboard, uh.

On this project. 

Marissa: Great. Yeah. And going off of that, yeah. So, um, springboard and Accenture have a partnership to create the state of Women’s Health Report. Um, can you tell me a bit about why you felt it was important to have this partnership and to create this report? Uh, Julie, I’ll bring it back to you for that.

Julia: Sure. So we’ve been working with Springboard on this for a while and. We really have been partnering with them on this initiative that’s about kind redefining women’s health, which is a comprehensive initiative we’ve been working with. Be able to do research industry experts, patients voices on the ground, as well as SpringBoard’s kind of awesome portfolio of companies, um, to really shed light on how multifaceted women’s health really is to address the challenges, the opportunities, and really it’s designed.

At its core to raise awareness and to drive action and change, um, and to promote positive change around funding, research, innovation, everything around women’s health. 

Marissa: Great. Amani, anything to add there? 

Amani: Yeah, I think a few other things. Um, working with Accenture, we are really aligned on the shared mission and vision to.

Uh, not only redefine women’s health, but also shine light on some of those neglected areas of women’s health, um, that aren’t those, you know, traditional, um, aspects that, you know, maybe most people think of as women’s health. Um, and like Julia said, to also provide, um, key stakeholders the data and the information to drive, you know, meaningful innovations, investment and change in women’s health.

Marissa: Great. Yeah. And I, I understand that there’s a part one, and that was released last year and then you just released, um, part two. Mm-hmm. Um, so can you tell me a little bit about what the key findings of each of those, um, reports are? Um, Amani, maybe I’ll start with you on that one. 

Amani: Yeah. So to set the stage on part one, um, that was June of 2024 that we developed and released that report.

Um, and it was really focused on. Three key themes that we found that limits the progress of women’s health. That being the first one underfunded. Um, the second being under researched and the third being, um, misunderstood. 

Marissa: Great. Yeah. Um, can you maybe, um, what are, what are some of the, the key findings that you really found in that?

Like, um, you know, the, the main points that you want people to take away from that? 

Amani: Yeah, so underfunded. As we know, fewer dollars in the public and private sectors are being directed to research, development and investment in women’s health. Um, under research, we see that research and development is disproportionately.

Either male focused or gender neutral focused, um, which leads to this larger, uh, women’s health research gap and then misunderstood. Um, and I think this is from really the care delivery aspect as well as women themselves understanding, uh, their risk factors as they go through their healthcare journey.

So that’s the three sort of points in detail that we highlighted in point in part one. 

Marissa: Great. Yeah. Julia, would you like to add anything on part one before we, um, you know, maybe discuss part, the findings of part two? 

Julia: No, I think Imani highlighted it really well. I think part one was really kinda a, a large overview and, and I think it’s a lot of aspects that I.

People understand and, and is sort of well understood, but kind of starting to put the numbers to it and starting to really add the data and information and findings to give people a more solid foundation and understanding of those, of those items. 

Marissa: Yeah. Great. And what about part two? What are some of the big, um, themes that you want people to take away from the second part of this report?

Julia: So part two, we really expanded on part one and took a deep dive and a lot of people, I think traditionally think of women’s health as as just gynecological or reproductive health. And we really wanted to showcase that women’s health really does encompass. You know everything about health, everything about wellness.

So it includes cardiovascular, it includes autoimmune, it includes, uh, mental health, it includes, uh, bone health, kind of everything about this is women’s health. And so we really wanted to focus on the things that were conditions that did not affect women solely, but rather either differently or disproportionately.

And we focused in on cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases and really looked at those across the entire. Patient pathways. So pre-diagnosis before you even go to a doctor’s office, diagnosis, your experience with healthcare providers in the health system and post-diagnosis, treatment outcomes, things like that.

And then we also took a look at what we kind of called healthcare foundation. So even before the patient experience, you have funding, you have research and development and kind of where are. The barriers and what’s impeding the improvement of women’s health in those therapeutic areas, which really prompt us to examine why these barriers exist, what can be done to eliminate them.

And that’s really what we focused on for part two of the report. 

Marissa: Yeah. Amani, would you like to add anything there? 

Amani: Oh, I think that was great. Um, I think one of my favorite parts, and Julia hit on this is the lens that we took of. Looking at women’s health through the patient journey and also adding that funding and research and development component to provide that full, um, picture of, you know, all the way from we have funding, how are we developing tools, therapeutics, diagnostics, and how does that look as, um, someone receives care?

Marissa: Yeah. Yeah. And going off of that, um, while conducting both one and two, um, parts of this report. Was there anything that really surprised you in the women’s health space?

Amani: That’s a good question. 

Julia: Uh, I can, I can start with something. I give you a second to think. I think what really shocked me was kind of how big the awareness piece is both. You know, for people outside of just women, but especially within women. So, you know, only, I think it’s like 37% of women aged 18 to 55 understand that their biology kind of uniquely affects their cardio risk.

Um, and only 44% of women understand that cardiovascular disease is their greatest threat. It, it kills more women than cancer. It kills more women than really anything else. And I think finding out. Kind of go through looking at data, looking at research, and also just talking to, to patients and talking to physicians, understanding that there’s a lot of work to be done in, in helping women understand their own risks and their own health profiles, um, and how that changes over the course of their lifetime.

Marissa: Yeah. Yeah. Really well said. Anything 

Amani: to 

Marissa: add? 

Amani: Yeah, for me, I think it would be the investment piece. Um. We noted that 70% of investment goes towards wellness, you know, reproductive pregnancy, fertility, um, and that’s not a holistic view of women’s health. Uh, while reproductive care and fertility care are very important, I think understanding the full scope of women’s health will lead to.

Bigger investment. Uh, we are 50% of the population. Um, so I think there’s a huge investment opportunity looking and investing women’s health outside of the scope of reproductive organs. Um, so I’d like to see that. And the second is around research and development. Um, preclinical and clinical work is.

Based on, uh, male physiology. So whether that’s human, animal or at the cellular level, um, the very basis of, um, our treatments are not within the sex specific context of, of women. 

Marissa: Yeah. Yeah. Extremely well said. And, um, what are some of your additional plans for this report? Do you, do you, um, are you stopping after two parts or do you plan to do any additional research and release new reports?

Amani: That’s a great question. Um, I do think additional reports are always on the table. I mean, there’s so much more to dig into. Um, I’m even thinking from a social aspect. I mean, we could really take this and stratify it and, and, and really produce some new findings. Um, so I think there could potentially be more reports to come.

Marissa: Sure. Yeah. Julia, anything to add? 

Julia: I agree with money. I think there’s, there’s always more to say and I think kind of the deeper we go with these reports, it’s almost a case of we don’t know what we don’t know, so. Mm-hmm. You know, you’re looking into an aspect and you’re like, is do I, do I not know the answer?

Because. You know, it’s just super deep in the paper or, or something like that. Or is it because the research just hasn’t been done yet? So I think this has kind of been an adventure for, for me and for my team at least, of discovering kind of how big the gap really is. And so I think as we make those discoveries, there’s always, always room to.

To share that information and to, to really call that out. 

Marissa: Yeah. And I don’t know if you’d be able to share this, but if you were to conduct another report, what are some things that you would like to focus on? What are, what are some areas that you feel deserve, um, more attention and research. 

Amani: I am so interested in care delivery.

I had a background in that. And so starting from. First on the medical lens medical training. Um, I would love to dig into the research and education that healthcare providers and practitioners, um, get, you know, starting in med school all the way into, you know, being a practicing physician over X amount of years, um, and sort of thinking about how to restructure, um, how to provide women’s healthcare.

Um, another thing I would like to to think about is education. Um, for women themselves to understand, uh, that it’s not just about menstruation or pregnancy or fertility, um, and to, to sort of spread a well spread awareness within the lens of education for women. 

Marissa: Yeah. Yeah. So well 

Amani: said. Uh, Julia, how about you?

Julia: I think mon and I kind of compliment each other really well here because I have a bioengineering background. And so I think a lot of what I’m interested in is, is really that research piece and I think it, it almost closes the circle on the healthcare journey because you have preclinical research and then you also have things like adverse events reporting at the end, which really tell you.

How well did that science actually do? Um, and especially considering we found that 51% of adverse events were reported by women since 2015, which kind of blew my mind. I think there’s a lot of work to be done and kind of how we restructure our research, um, and how we restructure. You know, how research is conducted, how clinical trials are conducted, and, and how we address patient safety.

Um, I think there, there’s a lot of room for improvement in those spaces. 

Marissa: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, well one last question, um, for you both. Uh, so based on the findings of part one and part two of these, uh, reports. Um, you know, what are your recommendations for other healthcare stakeholders such as payers, employers, uh, providers, maybe healthcare investors?

Uh, what do you recommend? Uh, Julie, I’ll bring it back to you. 

Julia: Yeah. Um, I might be stealing this from Imani, but I’ll, I’ll kind of start with the funding piece. I think there is a big kind of change that needs to happen around the mindset of. The ROI on Women’s Health, and I think there is a much bigger opportunity, um, for return for investors, especially for, for big companies.

And you think about pharmaceuticals, you know, out of the top 20 pharma companies, over 75% of them have a cardiovascular portfolio or an autoimmune portfolio. And so I think kind of changing the mindset and being able to. Tap into those preexisting portfolios and say, Hey, there’s a really big market here that, that hasn’t really been explored yet.

Um, and realizing that it’s not that you have to have kind of a women’s health portfolio that’s separate from everything else because women’s health is encompassed in, in these other divisions. Um, so I think that’s, that’s something 

Amani: great. Yeah. Um, and one thing to add there is. Around policy, and I think it’s, we can’t talk about women’s health without acknowledging that.

Policy aspect. Um, and we are sort of in this unknown, but, um, in light of that coalition building, um, through Women’s health initiatives, um, funding mandates, which we saw in the last administration, uh, data transparency, all of these things, um, to sort of couple the research aspect and the funding aspect to bring a full community and ecosystem around women’s health from key stakeholders.

Marissa: Yeah. Which we are seeing 

Amani: some key organizations doing, which is great, but, um, I think that’s needed to close systemic gaps. So just to acknowledge the policy aspect. 

Marissa: Yeah. Yeah. Um, going off of that, are there any specific, um, policy changes, um, that you would really like to see move along?

Amani: There’s a lot. Um, I would say, I know we were talking about, uh. Sort of cardiovascular and autoimmune, those that definitely are disproportionately, um, affect women. But thinking about, uh, Medicaid, um, and maternal health outcomes, uh, those disproportionately affect, uh, women of color, women in general, um, I would love to see their.

Be outside of the financial aspect, understanding that, uh, passing certain policies are actually financially beneficial for states. Um, so that’s just some advocacy there. That, uh, policy such as that does save lives. 

Marissa: Yeah. Yeah. Glad you called out the policy aspect. Uh, Julia, I know I said that was the last question, but was there anything, um, you wanted to add on the policy side?

Julia: No, I think, I think Amani well, and I. You know, in regards to funding, I think there are potentially more, especially government avenues to get funding that, that that should be explored. And that should be more open to women than I think they are right now. And not that they’re necessarily not available for women, but I think kind of the, it goes back to that awareness piece of.

Of people knowing that, that there’s funding out there to support them. Um mm-hmm. And I think there are definitely avenues where it’s not necessarily available and that’s where the policy piece comes in. 

Marissa: Yeah. Yeah. Very well said. Um, well this has been such a great conversation. Um, thank you both so much for taking the time, um, and best of luck on your future work together.

Really appreciate it. 

Amani: Thanks Marissa. Thanks for having us.