Investigating Health Equity Issues

In this edition of MASH (Marketing Advice for Startups in Healthcare), we sat down with Anastassia Gliadkovskaya, a health equity reporter at Fierce Healthcare to discuss what inspires her, how environmental issues are becoming healthcare issues, her perspective on the most promising health tech and her advice for startups looking to pitch their stories.Your early career writing focused on other industries, like politics, elections, wealth, and more. What inspired you to focus on healthcare, and more specifically health equity?Early in my career with no health reporting background, I got a tip that led me to several healthcare investigations, which I pitched and placed with major newsrooms with ease as a burgeoning freelancer. This process opened my eyes to the importance and possibilities of covering healthcare.Like many journalists, I find reporting to be the most exciting part of the job. There’s no shortage of sources for story ideas: tips, social media, watchdogs, public data/records requests, and existing reporting. What was your experience like as a freelancer?As a freelancer, once I had an idea, I did preliminary reporting to establish sources, confirmed I can get the evidence, etc. Then I would cold pitch to an editor, laying out my reporting plan and why the story is unique/works for their outlet. Once accepted, I’d report it out. Finding stories is easy, but being a freelancer was hard. You need superhuman time management skills and must constantly hustle. Pay is generally low and placing stories can be a very inconsistent process (not every outlet has a freelance budget, editors are hard to get a hold of, etc). There are also few protections for freelancers’ IP. You could pitch an idea that ultimately gets assigned to a staffer, and under many contracts, the outlet owns the rights to your work. You could do all the reporting before getting paid and the story could ultimately get killed at the editor’s discretion. One benefit is being your own boss (mostly – you still answer to editors), and being selective with what work you take on.As for how I got into health equity reporting – because of my background in investigative journalism, I am programmed to think about the underdog in a given situation. I started at Fierce Healthcare during COVID, when health disparities were at the forefront of nearly every story. So it made sense to focus on that. What would you say are three of the most pressing issues in health equity and how can technology begin to alleviate some of them?• Lack of standardization in clinical care. This could be in collecting data, implementing protocols like screenings, and surgical outcomes. AI and health tech can help support and minimize human error and inconsistency to deliver better, safer patient care. It already is being used to help make autism diagnoses or predict surgical risk.Like many, I have my doubts about generative AI. I just covered a study that found ChatGPT failed a gastroenterology practice exam. On the flip side, there’s evidence that chatbots may be better and more empathetic when answering patient questions than docs. Epic is going all in on generative AI right now, with several health systems eager to be early adopters. I think this area has a lot of potential to strengthen the work of healthcare professionals, but not replace it. Language models need to be specifically trained on medical data and updated continuously to ensure accuracy in diagnosis/treatment. • Addressing the social determinants of health. The healthcare system is trying, but it’s still piecemeal. There remains a lack of adequate coordination and communication between providers, payers, and community-based organizations. Tech can help support social care efforts, like keeping track of referrals and outcomes. Just a handful of companies – mostly Unite Us and FindHelp – aim to do this, but the market is under-penetrated and way more innovation is needed.• Access to care. Tech is and will continue to revolutionize care delivery outside hospitals’ four walls. Whether it’s leveraging digital therapeutics or remote monitoring, democratizing access to affordable, accessible care is the future. Nontraditional care settings are booming – virtual, in-home, hybrid, retail – driven largely by COVID-19. Not only are these more convenient, but they’re also cheaper for patients. I expect these options to continue escalating in popularity, though certain challenges remain, like evolving regulatory and reimbursement pathways.What has been the most impactful story you've covered recently and what would you say the impact was?I recently covered the launch of a new virtual primary care provider for neurodivergent adults, Hopper Health. Neurodivergent adults are more likely to have comorbidities and to avoid care due to previous negative healthcare interactions. Most medical students also don’t feel adequately informed about treating patients with neurodivergent conditions like autism. This issue and Hopper’s founder’s story really resonated with readers. I hope this type of coverage elevates the urgency around addressing these types of gaps in care for the underserved. How do you approach covering complex healthcare topics in a way that is accessible and engaging for your readers? Are your readers mostly people who work in healthcare?Most of our readers work in the industry. Though they certainly know more about healthcare than a lay audience, we can’t assume they know the nuance of every area. A compelling story makes people care by explaining the implications to readers, and how they or someone they love might be affected.Another good rule: don’t write a misleading headline. And if it asks a question, be sure to answer it in your story. Doing so preserves reader trust and engagement. On Podnosis you recently spoke about how things like greenhouse gasses and other climate issues are impacting our healthcare system’s ability to effectively treat patients and “do no harm.” How do you think your role as a health equity reporter will evolve as we see more and more healthcare issues related to the environment?ESG became a buzzword not long ago and is only going to keep spreading through the corporate world. Though “E” is often the most talked about component, time will tell who is actually delivering meaningful changes. Without a doubt, environmental justice is one of the most important, overlooked health equity topics of our time. We can’t cover climate without covering healthcare, and vice versa. I’d love to see more coverage from others on this. We read Fierce Healthcare to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and news in healthcare, but where do you go to get up to speed?STAT News, Kaiser Health News, Politico, Axios, NYT’s DealBook, experts on Twitter. Twitter is my most-used social platform, followed by LinkedIn. While there are folks in the media industry I really respect who are on BlueSky, I’m not personally interested in joining more platforms. BlueSky is also not without chaos and problems at the moment.How do you approach conducting initial research on a company that you want to interview? Are you Googling, looking at the website, checking social channels, or looking at tools like Pitchbook/Crunchbase? What would throw you off in your initial research and make you not want to conduct an interview with the company?Existing coverage, plus press releases, sometimes financial documents if public. If I am investigating a company, social media, forums like Reddit and government databases. If the company has been in a major scandal, legal or otherwise, that would cast doubt. If you had unlimited time, what’s one topic or theme you’d cover more of and/or do a deep dive report on?I’d love to do a deep dive looking at various healthcare stakeholders (e.g. hospitals) and whether they have set climate targets or not. I’d track the extent of those goals, whether they track Scope 3 emissions and if they are actually making progress to reduce their climate footprint.What types of technologies are you most excited about in the startup world?Big data or real-world evidence for insights into patient populations; remote therapeutic monitoring; AI that helps diagnose, measure disease progress or predict outcomes.What’s one piece of advice you’d give to a startup when it comes time to work with you on a story? What do you wish they knew?What every reporter wants to know is: why is this story worth writing about? What’s new and unique here? Clearly answer those questions. Contextualize your service or product by answering the Why Now question and what gap in the market you are aiming to fill. How does your offering differ from competitors? How will you monetize? What is your long-term vision besides turning a profit?##A big thanks to Anastassia for sharing her insight. You can follow her on Twitter and connect with her via LinkedIn.To learn how VSC Adrenaline combines strategic media relations and surgical digital content marketing to empower startups to build credibility and awareness while adhering to regulatory and industry standards, visit us at https://vsc.co/adrenaline.