Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.

Healthcare Brew

Quinn Sental

Healthcare Brew delivers the latest news and trends in healthcare.

healthcare-brew.com

Biden administration bans asbestos as part of Cancer Moonshot initiative

Asbestos, a known carcinogen, is linked to more than 40,000 deaths a year. 

Maia Anderson

New bill aims to help providers identify patients at risk for suicide 

The legislation comes as suicide rates have increased dramatically.

Direct Care

Nicole Ortiz

Occasionally, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition?

Dominique Wells, chief operating officer at Conduit Health Partners, a nurse-led organization that connects patients with health systems, began her career “with a mop and a bucket” as a hospital housekeeper, moved into various nursing roles, and eventually found herself in the C-suite.

Each of her roles, she told us, gave her “a deeper sense of empathy for the people who keep our system running.”

We spoke with Wells about her unique journey to the C-suite and the parts of her job that bring her the most joy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in healthcare?

I think a great analogy for my current position is that of mission control. While I may be powered differently than a spaceship, I have to speak the language of healthcare and navigate the evolving technology and regulatory landscape to make sure the mothership does not crash land. Central to all this activity is ensuring that our team of 200+ nurses who work remotely nationwide—along with sales, marketing, and administrative staff—is operating as a tight unit.

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

I have a deep passion for helping people. In my current role, I am able to combine my informatics background with my nursing experience to support nurses working at the top of their license.

Navigating healthcare today is challenging for everyone, and we’ve all experienced loved ones getting caught up in the complexities and, at times, falling through the cracks. I love that our nurses are there to fill in critical gaps and provide the comfort and reassurance that people desperately need when they are facing uncertainty. Nurses form the foundation of optimal care delivery, and I’m acutely focused on bringing nursing back to the center of the patient journey.

What healthcare trend are you most optimistic about?

, but for me, the concept of agentic nursing is particularly intriguing. I know a lot of people in nursing are worried about how AI is going to impact the profession, especially the human side of it. But I see agentic nursing as an opportunity to get nurses back to the bedside and in front of patients. If AI can address a lot of the administrative and documentation overload that nurses are currently burdened with, these professionals will be free to excel at what they were trained to do: care for patients.

What healthcare trend are you least optimistic about?

, healthcare has an incredible opportunity to continue building on the momentum we saw during the pandemic. That period sparked a surge of 

 and a strong commitment to improving care through innovation. Stakeholders showed a willingness to take risks, explore new ideas, and embrace change—all of which led to meaningful progress.

Tell us one new or old health tech product or platform that’s made your life easier.

This answer will probably get mixed reviews, but EHRs [

] have transformed the way healthcare is delivered. They have evolved over the years and seen their share of issues, but I remember the days of 

. Clinicians could spend half their day hunting down patient records—time that could have been spent more proactively getting ahead of patient care issues.

EHRs have provided the foundation for us to advance key industry initiatives in a way that would not have been possible before, ultimately impacting more lives for the better.

Cutout of a Conduit Health Partners's Dominique Wells placed inside an abstract shape.

How this CCO is trying to take nursing ‘back to the center of the patient journey’

Conduit Health Partners’s Dominique Wells talks AI, EHRs, and more.

illustrated headshot of caroline catherman, healthcare brew reporter

Caroline Catherman

Wondering who’s in and who’s out at major health companies, emerging startups, hospitals, and more? We’ve got you covered.

Have a job announcement to share? Drop Caroline an email at 

 The former US Surgeon General was appointed as a distinguished medical advisor at Eko Health, a San Francisco-based company specializing in AI-powered cardiac and pulmonary detection tech, the startup shared Aug. 19.

 Indiana health system Columbus Regional Health announced Aug. 21 its president and CEO was no longer with the company after less than five months in the role. The former president and CEO Jim Bickel returned from retirement to replace Baker on an interim basis.

Birmingham, Alabama-based urgent care franchise American Family Care announced Brister as its new chief marketing officer on Aug. 25. He’s previously worked in marketing positions with hair removal chain European Wax Center and medical spa Ideal Image, according to his LinkedIn.

Global mental health workplace platform Modern Health announced Cheng as its chief technology officer Aug. 12. Cheng was most recently SVP of engineering at Oscar Health, a health insurance company focused on 

Nucleus RadioPharma announced Hahn as its CEO on Aug. 20. The former FDA commissioner most recently worked as CEO-partner of venture capital (VC) firm Flagship Pioneering and CEO of Harbinger Health, a Flagship-backed biotechnology company focused on early cancer detection.

CMS’s former deputy chief medical officer (CMO) and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s former CMO is now chief outcomes officer at Paytient. The Missouri-headquartered healthcare payments company announced the appointment July 29.

 On Aug. 11, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Flagship Pioneering announced Singh as a new CEO-partner of Flagship and the new CEO of Harbinger Health. Singh is fresh off a nearly 15-year stint as managing director of VC firm Artiman Ventures, according to his LinkedIn. He replaces Harbinger’s previous CEO Stephen Hahn.

Blue Shield of California has made the interim CEO its permanent head, the company announced Aug. 26. Stuart had been in the position since March, replacing Lois Quam, who left after two months in the role earlier this year.

Trading his role as CEO of Texas’s Seton Medical Center Harker Heights Swindle is set to become CEO of Longview Regional Medical Center, another Texas hospital, effective Sept. 30, according to an Aug. 19 press release. He will be taking the position from interim CEO Brett Maxfield.

Headspace’s former chief clinical officer has taken the same role at personalized nutrition care provider Nourish, the company announced Aug. 9.

Healthcare Brew's August on Rotation editorial feature

On Rotation: August 2025

We keep our fingers on the pulse of who’s moving where in the healthcare world.

Cassie McGrath

Now that the Supreme Court officially ruled last week the Trump administration 

 in research grants as part of its defunding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that started in February, universities and hospitals across the country are left scrambling to remain stable.

Healthcare and academic research rely heavily on NIH funding. 

 reported NIH funding drives the economy, bringing in $2.56 for every dollar of spent funding and supporting 400,000+ jobs across the country.

The UMass Chan Medical School laid off or furloughed an estimated 200 employees and cut its incoming fall 2025 graduate class from 70 students to 13 due to cuts, according to the institution. 

The American College of Obstetricians also 

 due to the administration’s anti-DEI push, which it said conflicted with its efforts to reduce maternal health issues.

Still, the White House is set on limiting money across federal agencies, proposing $27 billion in 

—that’s $18 billion less than before—in the Trump administration’s discretionary budget proposal.

Industry and philanthropic dollars can create a lifeline for some research. For instance, Robert Wright, ​​chair of the department of environmental medicine at New York’s Mount Sinai, 

 as an option for environmental health-related research, and the head of AI and engineering at Northwestern Medicine’s cardiovascular institute, Adrienne Kline, received $1.4 million in industry funding from Big Tech to 

. Kline called these industry partnerships a “godsend.”

Despite this, Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy and regulatory counsel at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), said there’s “no replacement” for federal government funding.

“It is hard to overstate how important NIH funding is to scientific progress,” she told us.

Philanthropic organization the Gates Foundation announced on Aug. 4 it would provide $2.5 billion through 2030 to support R&D in women’s health, specifically to address five areas: obstetric care and maternal immunization, maternal health and nutrition, gynecological and menstrual health, contraceptive innovation, and sexually transmitted infections.

Researchers at universities, hospitals, and biotech companies including health tech company Philips Innovation Center, biotech company Vedanta Biosciences, and Massachusetts General Hospital, all based in Massachusetts, will receive funds from the Gates Foundation, Rasa Izadnegahdar, director of maternal, newborn, child nutrition, and health at the nonprofit, told Healthcare Brew.

“Some of the challenges around women’s health have been longstanding. It’s been 

 for a long time,” Izadnegahdar said, noting this as one of the reasons the foundation wanted to pursue women’s health.

And that lack of research is “only exacerbated by the recent cuts in NIH,” he said.

“Our hope is that we create some enthusiasm and optimism in the space,” Izadnegahdar added, and “that others will join in as well.”

Other private contributions have also been made this year, like an $8.6 million donation from the local estate of community leader Donald Coldren to Pennsylvania-based health system WellSpan Health, where the late Coldren and his wife were once patients.

Philanthropic donations bring in an estimated 

 to health and science research, whereas NIH doled out $47.4 billion in 2024.

“It is a very complicated, very hard time in biomedical research,” she said.

Not only did researchers lose their funding but it’s been 

 released from grants that had already been awarded, and the application process for new projects has slowed down, she said. The National Cancer Institute, for example, anticipates it will only be able to fund 4% of grant applicants after October, down from 9%, 

“Our nation decided decades ago to create this relationship between academic institutions and the federal government that had a vision for advancing scientific progress,” Pierce said.

Further, she said other funding sources, like philanthropic or industry sources typically have a specific mission or a commercial end—such as the Gates Foundation’s recent efforts to fund research in specific areas of women’s health—whereas the NIH has been dedicated to improving scientific progress and health advancement broadly.

“There is no replacement for the federal government in terms of the breadth, the scope, the volume of research that it can and has and should fund,” Pierce said. 

Correction 08/29/25: This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of employees laid off or furloughed from UMass Chan Medical School in April 2025 and the correct number of incoming students.

Illustration of an open hand with a coin on the left and an open hand in a doctor's white coat with a heart that has a cross in the middle

Philanthropic, industry grants help offset missing NIH grants but cannot fully fill gaps

While the NIH is a driver of new medications, jobs, and economies, funding is still being cut. 

Hoping to switch jobs soon? You may have fewer options than you think.

Healthcare went on a hiring spree after the Covid-19 pandemic began. Today, there are still more healthcare job openings than pre-pandemic, but the number of job postings is decreasing, according to a new report from the job listing and hiring platform Indeed.

, which analyzes Q2 2025 job postings through July 11, found nursing had the largest decline: Job postings are down 10% YoY, though still up 15.1% compared to Feb. 1, 2020.

The trend isn’t exclusive to healthcare, either. Many industries have slowed or plan to 

, Daniel Culbertson, senior economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab and the report’s author, told us.

“Healthcare was generally thought of as recession-proof, or downturn-proof, before the pandemic. But the pandemic taught us that healthcare can be impacted just like the rest of the labor market, and so it’s probably better thought of as recession-resistant,” Culbertson said.

The downturn in nursing openings in particular is likely due in part to more healthcare facilities bringing nurses back in-house for full-time employment rather than relying on temporary staffing prone to frequent turnover, like 

 in journal Health Affairs found the nation’s total number of registered nurses fell by more than 100,000 in 2021—the largest single-year drop in four decades. 

 left the healthcare workforce overall that year, sending employers on a temporary hiring spree.

While the recent decline in postings could be a sign of “the overall labor market slowdown,” it’s likely also “healthcare returning to its long-term [pre-pandemic] trend,” Culbertson said.

Job postings also declined for personal care and home health positions by 8.8% and medical technicians by 8.4%.

It’s not necessarily bad news for healthcare professionals looking for a new employer, though.

Demand for healthcare workers is still high. There were 1.5+ million healthcare and social assistance job openings in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Though that’s the lowest since 2021, it’s 25.5%higher than the 1.2+ million from the same month in 2019, before the pandemic began.

And not all healthcare roles are seeing openings shrink.

For instance, there was a 3.7% increase in postings for physicians and surgeons and a 2% increase in postings within the 

 through July 11, according to Indeed’s report.

In a hospital conference room, a medical team listens attentively as a new hire discusses their qualifications

Healthcare job openings decline

Attention job seekers: Time to stop procrastinating and turn in those applications, pronto!

Loneliness epidemic. Mental health crisis. These terms are often used to describe the state of mental health in the US, all while the country is also experiencing a behavioral health 

These mental health professionals provide counseling without going through the traditional state licensure process. One group, the 

 (LCA), is helping train groups like social workers, legal aid staff, and community health workers to become lay counselors.

Co-founder Alli Moreno brings her own expertise as a defense investigator and lay counselor to provide guidance for others interested in a “nonconventional pathway.”

After leaving the legal field when she started a family, she told us she was looking “for something that would be intervening or making a meaningful difference in people’s lives.” She joined up with co-founder Elizabeth Morrison in 2021 to see how Morrison’s psychology background and Moreno’s experience could help shape the field.

Healthcare Brew spoke with Moreno about her career and what people might not know about lay counseling.

What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about lay counselors?

One that comes to mind is this misconception that mental health counseling is only being provided by licensed professionals. The reality is that, as we all know, the mental health crisis is acute, and the 

 is severe, so there’s that ongoing barrier to access.

There’s tons of different ways to approach this issue, but one of them is to acknowledge that mental health counseling is happening. Really pour in rigorous professional development like workshops, training, practice opportunities, adding weekly clinical supervision and support, all of that to make structural adjustments so that counseling that’s already happening is more effective and the people providing it are more confident in doing so.

[Another] misconception is the idea of a triage, or the idea [lay counseling] is a cheaper way to provide care. Our hope is that it is equivalent in terms of value.

What are the biggest challenges you’re trying to address through the LCA?

It’s really access to quality mental health support. The need is so severe, and it’s only increasing as more marginalized, vulnerable communities are targeted in government policies and 

. It’s already affecting young people and immigrants and LGBTQ+ community members; it’s already affecting people in 

There are so many competent, skillful people who are nowhere in this conventional licensure pipeline. But they have skill, and they have community connection, and they have the desire to be helpful. So, bridging that gap of helping folks, who are already in connection with people who need the help, to help them be able to do that even better and more competently and confidently and feel acknowledged is the biggest challenge.

What are the ways health equity plays into how you’re approaching this?

When you think about people who have lower resources, have lower social power, they’re less likely to be able to get care that they need. When we’re supporting people who are already in those communities—who already have relationships to meaningfully respond to those needs and to do so in a way that’s supported and there’s continual learning and growth—we’re responding to people who have the least access. That’s where we’re gravitating toward first.

What’s your biggest achievement in your career so far?

These [cohorts] are hearing these mental health struggles from people, which means that they’re doing something to indicate to the people that they’re safe. And that means that they have some sort of skill. And then not only is that person telling them, but they keep coming back.

I always feel so proud and happy to be able to elevate and amplify and acknowledge that skill in other people who come through our course and who are on our team, too.

A portrait of Alli Moreno, co-Creator of the Lay Counselor Academy & Counselor.

Lay Counselor Academy's Alli Moreno discusses lay counseling and reaching underserved patients

Through the Lay Counselor Academy, Moreno is addressing a provider shortage in behavioral health.

Alli Moreno discusses lay counseling and reaching underserved patients

Accessing maternal care in rural areas is 

 don’t even provide birthing services, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.

So the Hope Women’s Resource Clinic, based in Beaumont, Texas, is hitting the road and bringing care to patients.

The maternal health clinic launched a “mobile medical unit” in 2020, and in 2023 switched to a 38-foot van that has two exam rooms, a waiting area, and a lab, Jeanette Harvey, executive director of the clinic, told Healthcare Brew. The mobile unit provides free care for pregnant people and only operates in Texas, mainly serving Jefferson, Orange, Hardin, Chambers, and Galveston counties surrounding Beaumont, a city of 115,000+ people.

“There’s nothing like us—nobody that does what we do,” Harvey said.

The mobile unit was created after clinic staff realized how hard it was for patients to reach them without access to public transportation, she said. The 

 reported that 21% of US adults who didn’t have vehicle or public transit access could not access “needed medical care” in 2022.

The facility initially started to provide Lyfts for patients in need of transportation, but soon realized it would be easier to go to them instead, according to Harvey.

It runs Monday through Thursday and serves each area consistently—always Jefferson County on Mondays, for example.

 In Texas, patients can get access to Medicaid coverage if they are pregnant (the Texas Standard reported 

 of 31.3 million Texas residents were pregnant and on Medicaid as of 2022), so a big part of the clinic’s work is conducting the medical testing required to get patients covered.

“If somebody’s trying to get on insurance, they don’t want to go somewhere where they have to pay to get proof that they need to be on insurance,” Harvey said, explaining that people need to provide documentation of pregnancy from a medical examiner to qualify for Medicaid.

The unit conducts ultrasounds and STD testing and also has the Hope Academy, which provides educational resources to parents until their baby turns one, according to Harvey.

At the academy, any parent patient of the clinic can take in-person or online classes about healthy behaviors, like going to the doctor and exercising, in exchange for points that help them access donated baby beds, car seats, diapers, wipes, and formula, Harvey said. The clinic delivers these items via the mobile unit.

Staff includes a medical director, a radiologist, an ob-gyn, registered nurses, licensed sonographers, a life coach, and a licensed counselor. The unit also provides a list of doctors that are covered by Medicaid.

The Hope Clinic does not receive government funding, Harvey said, operating solely on donations.

The clinic served about 3,800 patients in total in 2023, 273 of which were at its mobile unit. The total was nearly 4,700 total last year, 399 of which were mobile patients. It’s on track to treat 500 people through its mobile unit by the end of this year, Harvey said.

Additionally, the Hope Clinic is adding a physical site in Port Arthur, a city in Jefferson County about 30 minutes from the clinic’s main location, Harvey said. Once that building is finalized—they’re aiming for the end of the year, she said—staff will take the mobile unit to another area that’s yet to be determined.

At the Beaumont site, the clinic just opened a 3,400-square-foot parenting center, Harvey said, with the aim of serving parents and babies up to three years after birth.

“That’s where we see a lot more of the need,” she said, “beyond the prenatal.”

Babies do a lot of development in those first three years, which can have lasting effects on their life, the national 

 at Vanderbilt University reported in 2021.

The clinic acquired in 2020 donated property across the street, where it plans to build a shelter to support unhoused women and children. Harvey said the center’s waiting for $500,000 in funding to come through, but once it’s built, the shelter will have a caretaker on-site and operate as sort of a “mini hotel” to allow families to find permanent housing.

R Cody Stringer, senior director of innovation and product development at nonprofit March of Dimes, which has a number of mobile maternity units and works to improve maternal and infant care, said in an emailed statement the vans are “a lifeline for the families without access to appropriate pregnancy care.”

According to March of Dimes, only 2% of mobile health units in the US offer maternity care.

“We need more of these community-based interventions to ensure every mom and baby can access quality care, no matter where they live,” Stringer said.

Blue and white bus that reads Free ultrasound, pregnancy, and STD testing

Hope Women’s Resource Clinic Texas clinic is providing maternity care from a van 

The van travels to five counties in East Texas, helping pregnant people get on Medicaid and access prenatal care. 

This Texas clinic is providing maternity care from a van 

Angel Foster only enters the US via Canada, where she’s a professor. She doesn’t drive a car outside Massachusetts. And she doesn’t visit Florida, South Carolina, or other states that ban or restrict abortion.

These are the precautions this MD takes as founder of the Massachusetts Abortion Access Project (the MAP). It’s a service that prescribes and ships abortion medication via telehealth under Massachusetts’s shield law, which protects those physically present in Massachusetts from out-of-state penalties for accessing or assisting with abortion care.

Legal challenges to providing abortions via shield law have popped up over the last few months, but Foster and others 

. Foster envisions a future with even more providers working similarly from other states that have comprehensive shield laws.

“We have been trying to identify folks in those states who are willing to provide [this care], and then work with them to build out a practice so that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Foster said. “They can piggyback on a lot of the things that we’ve learned.”

Twenty-two other states and Washington, DC, currently have shield laws, according to the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. Eight of those—California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington—

 protect telehealth abortion even if the recipient is located in a state where it’s illegal for them to get care.

The Supreme Court struck down constitutional protections for abortion 

. The MAP was founded in September 2023. It serves 2,000 to 2,500 patients a month, 95% of whom are from states with bans and restrictions, Foster said. In 2024, about 10,000 abortions in the US were provided under shield laws each month, according to the nonprofit research organization the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount tracker.

Though not a prescriber herself, Foster still faces a risk of prosecution if she leaves the state of Massachusetts. The MAP’s five prescribers know the risks, too. “I think we all went into working in the shield law space with the expectation that there would be a lawsuit at some point,” Foster said.

Beyond Foster’s practice, telehealth abortions are growing rapidly, making up to 

 by the end of 2024, compared to 19% at the end of 2023 and 7% at the end of 2022, according to #WeCount.

 found that this form of treatment is just as safe and effective as in-person abortion.

No one has been jailed for providing a telehealth abortion to someone in a state where the procedure is banned.

Recently, however, 15 attorneys general from banned states signed a 

“These laws are blatant attempts to interfere with states’ ability to enforce criminal laws within their borders and disrupt our constitutional structure,” they wrote.

 against a New York doctor who allegedly prescribed pills to a minor in the state. So far, New York’s governor has held strong and refused to turn the doctor over for prosecution. This, and the MAP’s close working relationship with the Massachusetts government, gives Foster hope.

“We’re feeling very confident about the ability of the Massachusetts shield law to protect us,” she said.

White pills floating across between two phones with a checkmark on one screen. Credit: Anna Kim