Good morning! Accenture CEO Julie Sweet shares cancer diagnosis, Brooke Rollins is confirmed as secretary of agriculture, and Fortune’s Ellie Austin dives into the boom in companies focused on female longevity.
– Health matters. Since it became a preeminent concern of wellness culture, the longevity conversation has largely been dominated by men, whether it be the physician and author Dr. Peter Attia, the wildly popular neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman, or the multimillionaire tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, whose quest to defeat his own mortality made him the subject of a recent Netflix documentary called Don’t Die.
Which is why, at the CES conference in Las Vegas last month, Fortune Most Powerful Women hosted a discussion about female longevity and, specifically, the tech-focused companies that are springing up to optimize the length and quality of women’s lives. We were joined by four panelists with expertise in the sector: Melanie Goldey, CEO, Tally Health; Anne Fulenwider, co-CEO and cofounder, Alloy Women’s Health; Meena Harris, who alongside running her own media company, Phenomenal Media, is an investor in Midi, a virtual care clinic for midlife women; and Fern Mandelbaum, managing director, Emerson Collective, the venture fund that led Midi’s recent $60 million Series B funding round.
Data from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that women in the United States currently live an average of 5.8 years longer than men. However, that is no reason to dismiss the need for increased research into and funding for women’s healthcare at all life stages, says Fulenwider, whose company, like Midi, offers personalized treatment plans for women with menopause symptoms.
“Women’s longevity is very different from men’s for the simple fact that we age precipitously when our bodies stop making estrogen around 51 years old,” she told the MPW audience. “I don’t know why men started talking about it first. They probably just got more publicity [and also], women have so far to go in getting their basic health needs met, all the way from puberty and birth control to reproductive rights.”
At a time when the latter are being significantly rolled back, our panelists emphasized the importance of democratizing access to treatments that some might see as non-essential, as a means of women regaining autonomy of their health. While famous male biohackers, such as Johnson, are notorious for splurging millions to live longer, Midi accepts most major insurance providers. Alloy, meanwhile, charges a $50 annual fee and offers prescriptions starting at $40 a month.
Tally Health sells a $250 cheek swab test that reveals how fast your DNA is aging so that you can make lifestyle changes accordingly. If you can’t afford the test, the company publishes content on a weekly basis in the hope of arming people with information on future-proofing their health, whatever their budget.
According to Mandelbaum, a big milestone for female longevity will come when founders specializing in it achieve successful exits. “There are certainly some funds putting more money to work [in this sector] than others,” she told us. “But as so happens in venture, they’ll follow along and it has to be when there are some great acquisitions or IPOs. We are all waiting for a women’s health company to have a great IPO.”
Ellie Austin
[email protected]
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
|
