The Silicon Review - Best Business Review Magazine 50 Most Trustworthy Companies 2019 | Page 89

practices everyone should follow.
For example, eating whole foods,
minimizing added sugar, maintaining
a healthy weight, exercising regularly,
adding movement to your daily
activity, sleeping eight hours a day,
and managing stress are all helpful
to remaining healthy. People need
to learn self-care practices well in
advance to prevent chronic disease in
order to stay healthy.
Please describe the early
stages of ConnectWell
I first assembled a team of experts
to form ConnectWell’s Scientific
Advisory Board to support a wide
range of disease, health and wellness
topics including: healthy eating,
nutrition, diabetes, metabolic
syndrome, physical activity, stress
management, sleep, and maternal
health. The ConnectWell team, along
with our Scientific Advisory Board,
developed Wellness Initiatives for
the workplace as part of an overall
worksite wellness program. Wellness
Initiatives included experiences
designed to engage employees in their
health and well-being through the use
of walk-through Exhibits, and onsite
and take-home Challenges and Tools.
Our Wellness Initiatives were very
well received, and we wanted to
find a way to scale our offering to
reach more people with the new
“We educate, engage,
and support people
to integrate wellness
into life through
expertly vetted, up-
to-date digital health
and wellness content
that is science based.”
technology tools that are part of
everyday life. Digital technology
enables people to access information
anytime, anywhere. And with so many
people working remotely, wellness
programs delivered onsite excluded
a large segment of the workforce. We
realized that digitizing our offering
would allow us to reach many more
people with our health and wellness
resources and ultimately empower
more people to engage in their health.
How has your company grown
over the years?
While we were scaling our Wellness
Initiatives digitally, I met with
leadership at the UC Berkeley School
of Public Health to bring their
extensive collection of health and
wellness publications to a wider
audience. Their publications were the
ideal complement to our Wellness
Initiatives. Given that several of our
Scientific Advisory Board Members
were on the faculty at UC Berkeley
and UC San Francisco Medical School,
it was a great match.
In 2017 ConnectWell formed a
public-private partnership with the
UC Berkeley School of Public Health
to “consumerize” and “digitize”
its vast collection of health and
wellness content for distribution
through a wide range of health
delivery platforms. These include
worksites, benefits providers,
healthcare providers, insurance plans,
telemedicine and health coaching
providers, and wellness engagement
platforms.
Can you explain the contents
of ConnectWell’s offerings?
ConnectWell’s Digital Health
& Wellness Content offering is
comprehensive and includes three
content areas that work together to
support total health and well-being:
• Health & Wellness Digital
Library: Extensive coverage of
health, wellness, and disease
topics from A to Z
•
•
Wellness Initiatives: Wellness
education with strategies and
tools to help in the adoption of
healthy lifestyle practices
Healthy Recipe Collection:
Healthy recipes that are tasty,
easy to make, and made from
whole foods and healthy
ingredients
The content suite enables seamless
integration into digital health
platforms and employer or benefits
portals through ConnectWell’s
Application Program Interface (API),
hosting ConnectWell’s site directly
on their platform, or by a seamless
redirect to our site. The companies
that license our content for use with
their employees, members, patients,
and users are raising the health
education and engagement levels of
their populations by providing them
with an independent, trusted source
of expertly vetted health and wellness
resources. A healthier population is
more productive and cost-effective
for employers, providers, payers, and
society as a whole.
How are your products
important today?
The healthcare sector is almost 20%
of GDP, and healthcare premiums and
costs continue to outpace inflation
each year. This share of healthcare
does not include other expenditures
related to health that people invest in
for their well-being: food, over-the-
counter medications, supplements,
athletic and health club memberships,
exercise equipment, wearable devices,
massage treatments, alternative
therapies (acupuncture, chiropractor,
and integrative medicine), and
counseling.
Sixty percent of Americans have one
chronic condition and 42% have two
or more. Because chronic conditions
are long-term health issues, people
must get involved in managing their
care in order to maintain their health.
SR