Jannine Versi, HBS 2014

Earlier, in March, I sat down via Zoom with Harvard Business School alum, Jannine Versi, COO of Elektra Health to talk about her company, what she and her colleagues are doing as disrupters in the marketplace and the conversations surrounding womxn’s health, and how we here at HAIH can help support them. It felt inspiring, especially in light of it being Women’s History Month, and Versi makes you want to take action and be an ally. Below is our call, truncated for clarity’s sake:

Please introduce yourself

My name is Jannine Versi, I am the co-founder and COO of Elektra Health, and we are a women's health startup on a mission to smash the menopause taboo. We do so by empowering women who are navigating menopause, with access to evidence-based education, virtual care, and community.

We are an early stage company. My co-founder and our CEO, Alessandra Henderson, and I do a little bit of everything, and we have fantastic colleagues in marketing, programs, and clinical operations, and top-notch physicians and nurse practitioners who deliver clinical care to Elektra’s members. As COO, I focused on the day-to-day functioning of the organization, as well as everything related to our clinical operations and providing excellent virtual care, and our partners and stakeholders in the healthcare industry.

“we are a women's health startup on 

a mission to smash the menopause taboo”

Covid has been isolating a lot of people, adding to existing challenges. How is Elektra Health combatting [challenges] with covid?

There are multiple challenges, of course. But that also means opportunity and exciting avenues for new and different approaches to age-old problems, like menopause. Folks are well-aware that women's health, whether in terms of digital health or otherwise, has been underserved and has lacked investment.

The tradition of focusing healthcare and medicine on male subjects, often white male subjects, influences everything from funding, research and clinical trials, through to what physicians and healthcare providers really focus on in their training.

So, there are many other realms within women's health that are underserved, but our particular focus is on this universal female transition. Almost all women, given a certain age, will go through menopause--and yet we don't talk about it. It is still a really taboo and stigmatized topic, and 80% of women experience symptoms, which oftentimes can in fact be treated, and if left untreated can increase their risks for really serious health care conditions down the road. 

So later on in decades, menopause has been thought of as this, time associated with aging, the end of something, the end of beauty, the end of the reproductive window when it is in fact the gateway to the next half of a woman's life. And many women tell us that it can be an extremely liberating and enlightening and freeing transition to go through. We have oftentimes this stigmatized, conventional, I think, entrenched sexist view of menopause as becoming an old woman, who’s disappearing from relevance, when in fact, we believe the opposite is true. That is what we want to elevate and celebrate at Elektra and with our taboo-smashing mission.

You have these Elektra health salons, can you speak to that?

There are community events and the goal is really twofold. It is to bring education and awareness about this topic and to combat isolation. To help women access information, education that is evidence-based around what's happening to their bodies, and what they can do to mitigate their symptoms because another sort of myth of menopause is like I just need to grit my teeth and bear it. COVID has put so many pressures on everybody, but the folks that you might argue have been hit especially hard are women who are in this demographic and are often also caregivers. They may have children, they may have aging parents, they may have partners. They could have all or none of these things and still be struggling with the menopause transition, but it certainly can amplify things and make it even harder to put yourself first and your own health first. 

“when we are part of that community together, we combat that isolation, we normalize what is in fact a normal biological transition and help women make decisions around their own destinies”

Part of the reason for the salons is to create a safe space for the community to come together to hear from experts so again it's really important to surface the latest research and medicine in the space. Many physicians and healthcare providers actually are not educated in menopause (only 20% of OB GYN are trained in it). There is actually a knowledge gap among most healthcare providers so it's really important for us to surface those voices that make it accessible and enable women to be part of a community with one another because what we often hear is, women want to hear from experts, and then they really want to hear from one another. And when we are part of that community together, we combat that isolation, we normalize what is in fact a normal biological transition and help women make decisions around their own destinies. Whether that's around seeking medical care or lifestyle changes or anything that will help them through this transition, so they can live well and optimize good health for the long term.

How can we as HAIH help you (Elektra Health) with the work that you do?

Having this conversation is the first step. We were really thrilled to see menopause becoming increasingly part of the mainstream conversation. I think we've seen topics and healthcare shift in that direction from mental and behavioral health to maternal fetal medicine to fertility care. So, it seems natural and overdue, that people again normalize this discussion around perimenopause which is the years-long transition prior to the actual moment in time that is menopause: 12 months without a period.

So most people don't know that and gaining an understanding of this as a 5-7, sometimes 10+, year transition with numerous symptoms that change over time and can really affect one's quality of life. I think it's important that we're all aware of that whether we're thinking about students or professionals or family members or individuals, regardless of gender. Those who have ovaries are going to experience menopause and while some people sail through it without symptoms, many others – and I would put my grandmother in this category –, would never talk about it and sort of gloss it over and I think that that the newer generations are taking a bit of a different approach. Happily, we are speaking up around deserving better care, not being satisfied with the responses of  “grin and bear it” or “you'll get through it”, or that this is some sort of rite of passage that’s painful, uncomfortable, and has to be tolerated silently.

Who are some of the allies that you have with Elektra Health?

We have very strong ties to the women's health community, both providers and those who focus on policy issues, research and women's health, ranging from nonprofits to academic centers. One of our medical advisors is Dr. Lila Nachtigal. Founder and former president of the North American Medical Society, she has published numerous books hundreds of papers on the topic.She’s among the physicians and academics who really study the space and are increasingly coming out with really interesting research specifically on the role of estrogen in women's health as we age, and as estrogen declines, finding that if you intervene in what's often called the “midlife years”-- I'm using quotes because I actually don't love that term-- that you can help to forestall or reduce risk of conditions that are prevalent for women later in life so prevention is really key. And we have work with a lot of allies around that.

Another set of stakeholders we believe are really important are those in the cancer and oncology community. Oftentimes patients will be basically put into early menopause as a result of a surgery or medication related to cancer treatment. And we've heard many times and they've actually been folks or thought leaders in the press, discussing the fact that they had excellent oncology care, and really focused treatment for their cancer, no one talked to them or prepared them for the menopause experience to come that was in some ways worse. And of course this varies for everybody but that's a really important and large constituency of patients that we ought to be caring for holistically. 

And a lot of people believe that there aren't solutions for menopause symptoms. They've sort of heard of hormone replacement therapy which is one important tool in the toolkit for treatment, but they've heard that it causes cancer. And the story is more kind of nuanced than that. For many women, most of the time, the North American Menopause Society, and other medical research institutions have stated that hormone therapy can be really safe and effective. Of course with all medications, there are benefits and risks that you have to assess individually. Even if you're not interested in HRT, there are other solutions and options that many women aren't aware of. We emphasize education at Elektra so women can make informed decisions about their own care, and we ally with groups that are interested in and invested in women’s health over the full spectrum of life versus just the reproductive window. 

And then finally there's the employers and the kind of payers in the healthcare system, for whom this topic I think is probably starting to edge into their radar. Many of those payers are grappling with other areas of Woman's Health right now. Whether that's fertility benefits or parental leave or pregnancy or postnatal care. But we're starting to hear the conversation shift as these organizations consider the fact that these women are oftentimes, the ones who kind of are the gatekeepers to healthcare spend for their whole family and so they're very influential customers often at peak earning power themselves.

There are other allies including family members, partners, children, colleagues, people in the community I think it's really important to just be clued into what the challenges are and, like with anything else, knowledge helps us be more empathic or supportive.

You’re combatting not only knowledge gaps, but also misinformation. People sometimes go to a blog, or influencer, or someone in their community. Is that a challenge for you as well, to make sure that the general public gets quality information that’s informative and safe?

It’s two sides of the same coin. Surfacing information that is evidence-based and science-back because it's out there, and often, sort of overlooked. Again, this demographic suffers from the taboo and stigma that we associate with women, as they age, and that again is hopefully changing so we have more and more opportunities to have this conversation, and bring these topics into the limelight but certainly there are lots of misconceptions.

I mentioned one at least around this, hormone replacement therapy, which a lot of causes a lot of confusion and rightly so it is a confusing, nuanced topic, but we do do want to set the record straight as and where we can, in the most accessible way possible and reference, the experts who really, know the science and the latest research.

We've curated some of the most common symptoms. We have 25 on our website, and we're doing a little bit of a tour of what women in our Elektra community experience, describing the real story as real women share, to help to smash that taboo. 

Jannine Versi

COO, Elektra Health

Harvard Business School

 Class of 2014

This interview was compiled and condensed for clarity's sake by Maliha Mohiuddin.