Restoring trust in healthcare starts with clear, human communication. In this episode, Ross K. Goldberg, Founder and President of Kevin/Ross Public Relations, shares five decades of lessons from hospital boards, health plans, and health systems on how to make care feel navigable and trustworthy. We dig into why trust can take years to build and minutes to lose, how expectations and marketing influence perception, and what Kaiser Permanente did right to evolve its brand and experience. We also talk about aligning business and consumer needs in life sciences, the squeeze on primary care, and how allied professionals can expand access.

Specific moments you’ll hear: the four pillars Ross uses to define trust, a case example of Lyme disease testing and B2B vs consumer messaging, a practical script clinicians can use with well-read patients, and why celebrating everyday heroes in healthcare matters as much as publishing outcomes.

Ross Goldberg Bio:

Ross K. Goldberg brings nearly five decades in healthcare public relations and marketing communications, the last half of which as Founder and President of Kevin/Ross Public Relations. During his career Ross has represented hospitals, health systems, health plans, medical groups, healthcare trade associations and myriad of healthcare ventures in both the for-profit and nonprofit space.

Music Credit:

"Upbeat Corporate" by Music For Creators is licensed under CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution) via freemusicarchive.org.

Medication mismanagement is one of the largest hidden crises in healthcare. It leads to billions in wasted spending and avoidable hospitalizations every year. In this episode, we speak with Yoona Kim, PharmD, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Arine, a company using AI-driven medication intelligence in healthcare to ensure patients get the right therapies at the right time.

Yoona shares her founder journey. From being inspired by her parents’ work in public health and entrepreneurship, to building a scalable technology that reduces hospitalizations and improves quality ratings for health plans, she reflects on perseverance through early setbacks, lessons learned from her father’s resilience, and why aligning teams around patient outcomes has been central to Arine’s growth.

In our conversation, we cover the role of AI in reducing waste and bias in prescribing, the challenges of uniting payers, providers, and patients around a single solution, and how meditation and executive coaching help Yoona lead through uncertainty.

If you’re curious about how improving patient outcomes with technology is shaping the future of healthcare, this conversation is not to be missed.

Bio:

Yoona Kim, PharmD, PhD, is the CEO and co-founder of Arine, a next-generation medication intelligence company with a mission to solve medication mismanagement across the health care continuum. Arine’s proprietary platform pulls insights from a complex ecosystem of clinical, socioeconomic, and behavioral data to optimize patient outcomes and deliver value-based care. The technology uses predictive analytics to target care to at-risk members, develops artificial intelligence (AI)-driven personalized care plans for each patient, and uses machine learning to continuously optimize members’ medication therapy. Arine overcomes the limits of traditional, manually driven medication management approaches by making the practice scalable and allowing time-strapped health care providers to deliver care to large populations and with a far greater impact. Arine’s clients have achieved the highest quality ratings and have reduced hospital admissions by 40%.

Arine’s AI-driven technology platform is powering successful interventions that navigate complexities discussed in this article. For example, Arine’s platform identified a 67-year-old Latinx male in Medicare Advantage with diabetes and an elevated hemoglobin A1C at high risk for hyperglycemic crisis. He had a history of medication nonadherence and canceling appointments and expressed difficulty affording a branded diabetes medication. Arine’s platform identified a generic option, along with several other recommendations, to optimize the member’s array of medications for other comorbidities. The platform also flagged a pattern of underutilization of care, indicated by an absence of a primary care visit within the last year and connected the member to an appointment. These measures were supplemented by auto-generated Spanish-language educational materials on the importance of medications and lifestyle changes for diabetes management. Ultimately, the member was very receptive to the recommendations and started taking his medications more regularly.

Prior to Arine, Yoona has held various roles at digital health, pharma, and consulting companies. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University; a PharmD with an emphasis in health policy and management from the University of California, San Francisco; and a PhD in health economics and outcomes from the University of Texas at Austin.

Music Credit:

"Upbeat Corporate" by Music For Creators is licensed under CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution) via freemusicarchive.org.

Myopia control is changing how we care for kids’ eyes. In this episode, Dr. Maria Liu, Professor of Clinical Optometry at UC Berkeley and founder of the Myopia Control Clinic, explains evidence-based myopia control strategies, including orthokeratology for pediatric myopia, and why early exams and outdoor time matter. We discuss what parents can do now, how high myopia raises risks for retinal problems and glaucoma, and how clinic workflows and data can personalize care. Specific topics include candidate selection for ortho-k, safety and follow-up, why some adults still progress in graduate school, and how controlling myopia earlier expands options for refractive surgery later.

Bio:

Dr. Maria Liu is a Professor of Clinical Optometry at UC Berkeley. She holds the Pamela P. Fong Faculty Chair in Optometry & Health Care. The emphasis of her research and clinical expertise is the investigation and utilization of novel contact-lens designs and pharmaceuticals in myopia control. She is the founder of the Myopia Control Clinic, the first of its kind in a teaching clinic; it now serves as a model for optometry schools across the country. Originally from Beijing, Liu practiced as an ophthalmologist in China before relocating to the US in 2000. She obtained her MBA prior to her OD training at Pacific University, College of Optometry. She also completed an MPH and a PhD at UC Berkeley.

Music Credit:

"Upbeat Corporate" by Music For Creators is licensed under CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution) via freemusicarchive.org.

What does it really take to implement AI in healthcare—at scale, and responsibly? Dr. Daniel Yang, Vice President of AI and Emerging Technologies at Kaiser Permanente, joins us to share his firsthand experience leading the nation’s largest clinical deployment of generative AI tools like ambient scribes.

In this episode, Dr. Yang explains how Kaiser’s phased rollout combined clinician feedback, quality assurance, and real-time audits to build confidence and reduce burnout. He reflects on the cultural evolution among physicians—from fear of replacement to enthusiasm for tools that make them “better doctors and better moms.” We explore trust milestones, physician workflows, diagnostic decision support, and the impact of AI on clinical education.

This is a rare look into how a complex health system navigates the real-world challenges of trustworthy AI. Listen in for an insightful conversation with Dr. Yang.

Music Credit:

"Upbeat Corporate" by Music For Creators is licensed under CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution) via freemusicarchive.org.

After a life‑threatening emergency and months of confusing denials, Ali Diab turned his personal crisis into a mission to fix health benefits. In this episode, he shares how that experience led to founding Collective Health and the drive to put clarity and humanity back into insurance.

We discuss opaque pricing, broken incentives in the insurance industry, the promise of self‑insured employer models, and the patience required to build meaningful change in healthcare.

Listen for a thoughtful conversation about how a single moment can reshape purpose and why transparency and better incentives are essential to making care affordable and navigable.

Music Credit:

"Upbeat Corporate" by Music For Creators is licensed under CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution) via freemusicarchive.org.

What does it take to transform a health system from sick care to true health creation? In this episode, we sit down with Ann Somers Hogg, Director of Health Care Research at the Clayton Christensen Institute, to explore business model innovation in healthcare and the messy middle between bold ideas and sustainable systems.

Ann Somers shares what makes innovation efforts succeed or stall within large health systems, and how her time at Atrium Health helped her rethink value-based care, virtual behavioral health, and leadership incentives. She also explains how disruptive innovation works, and why only a CEO can green light meaningful change.

We also talk about her research on sugary beverage behavior change, with striking insights into what truly motivates parents to say goodbye to soda. From professional insight to personal story, this episode is a deep dive into transforming health by transforming the systems behind it.

Music Credit:

"Upbeat Corporate" by Music For Creators is licensed under CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution) via freemusicarchive.org.

Healthcare innovation in cancer care often means new drugs or breakthrough therapies. But as Othman Laraki, co-founder and CEO of Color, explains, the most powerful impact comes from making proven tools work for everyone.

In this episode, Othman shares his journey from Google and Twitter into healthcare, driven by his family’s history with breast cancer. He describes how Color evolved from genetic testing into a full “virtual cancer clinic” that addresses screening, early detection, treatment navigation, and survivorship.

We discuss the challenges of healthcare’s multi-payer system, why distribution costs outweigh lab costs, and how focusing on efficiency and simplicity leads to better outcomes. Othman also reflects on the future of AI in medicine, from reducing friction in basic care to scaling clinical judgment across populations.

Music Credit:

"Upbeat Corporate" by Music For Creators is licensed under CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution) via freemusicarchive.org.

Healthcare is a team effort, but we don’t always see the full team. Behind every physician visit, every hospital discharge, and every community clinic, there’s a vast, often invisible network of professionals keeping the system running.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Sunita Mutha, Director of the Healthforce Center and Professor of Medicine at UCSF, to talk about these hidden threads holding our healthcare system together. She shines a light on the vital roles played by medical assistants, patient navigators, community health workers, and clinic leaders—roles that are essential, yet too often overlooked.

Dr. Mutha walks us through the Healthforce Center’s mission to strengthen this workforce, from building lasting leadership programs that ripple across organizations, to fostering statewide collaborations, to producing data-driven insights that inform policy at every level.

We also dive deep into the realities of burnout—why it’s not just about overwork, but about the erosion of meaning in the work itself. Dr. Mutha reframes burnout as a structural failure, not a personal shortcoming, and shares practical ways to design systems that support the people who make care possible.

This is an honest, inspiring look at the human infrastructure of healthcare—what it takes to sustain it, and why investing in people is the key to a more equitable and resilient system.

Do you have thoughts on this episode or ideas for future guests? We’d love to hear from you.  Email us at [email protected].

What does it mean to provide care when medicine can no longer cure? In this episode, UCSF palliative care physician Dr. Brieze Bell shares her journey from professional dancer to integrative medicine leader, and how those seemingly unrelated paths came together in a life devoted to service, presence, and healing at the edge of life.

Dr. Bell reflects on the principle of non-abandonment, the emotional complexity of medical aid in dying, and her role leading UCSF’s End of Life Option Act program. She describes the system's work behind transforming this sensitive process into a compassionate, accessible, and legally sound experience for patients and families. Alongside deeply personal stories—including the death of her mother and a heartfelt posthumous letter from a patient—Dr. Bell reminds us that showing up for someone in their most vulnerable moment can change everything.

This conversation is essential listening for clinicians, caregivers, and anyone contemplating the ethics and emotions surrounding end-of-life care. Listen in as Christine Winoto, director of the UCSF Rosenman Institute, explores the dignity, discomfort, and transformative grace that define this powerful chapter of healthcare.

Tune in to hear what it truly means to be a companion at the end of life.

Do you have thoughts on this episode or ideas for future guests? We’d love to hear from you.

Email us at [email protected].

What if we could cure genetic disease before a baby is even born? In this episode, pediatric and fetal surgeon Tippi MacKenzie shares how in utero gene therapy and stem cell transplants could stop devastating diseases before life begins.

Dr. MacKenzie is a pioneer in fetal genome surgery and in utero stem cell therapy, with a mission to give every child a healthy start. As Director of the UCSF Broad Stem Cell Center, she leads groundbreaking clinical trials treating disorders like alpha thalassemia while pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in regenerative medicine.

She also opens up about her personal journey—from Juilliard-trained pianist to surgeon-scientist—and the New England Journal of Medicine article that changed the course of her career.

We discuss the unique biology of the fetus, why fetal immune tolerance presents a once-in-a-lifetime treatment window, and how her team is using lipid nanoparticles to develop future-ready gene editing strategies. We also explore how to better support the next generation of clinician-scientists and why stronger partnerships between academia and industry are key to bringing therapies from lab to patient.

Do you have thoughts on this episode or ideas for future guests? We’d love to hear from you.