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- RECAP: The Business of Women's Health 101 Session #3
RECAP: The Business of Women's Health 101 Session #3
The Six Core Pillars + YOUR EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT expires on Monday!
The Business of Women’s Health 101
What We Covered — and Why It Matters
Hi everyone —
Thank you again to those who joined live. This session was designed to do one thing:
Help you understand how the business of women’s health actually works — not how it’s marketed.
We spent the hour unpacking the structural forces underneath innovation: reimbursement, incentives, regulation, capital, and care models. Because if you don’t understand the system, you will misdiagnose the problem.
Below is a clearer breakdown of the core themes.
🧩 The Six Pillars Behind the Industry
These are the foundational levers shaping every company, job, and investment decision in women’s health.
1. The Ecosystem: The $4T System Women’s Health Sits Inside
U.S. healthcare is a $4 trillion economy made up of:
Providers (health systems, independent practices)
Payers (commercial insurance, Medicare, Medicaid)
Employers (who fund a significant portion of coverage)
Regulators (CMS, FDA, NIH, Congress)
Innovators (startups, pharma, digital health)
Investors (VC, PE, strategic capital)
Women’s health doesn’t operate outside this structure. It sits inside it — often misaligned with its incentives.
Key insight:
Women’s health is not under-innovated because of lack of ideas. It’s underbuilt because of structural incentive misalignment.
2. Care Delivery: Who Provides Care Shapes Everything
We examined how care is actually delivered:
OB-GYNs (overburdened, procedure-incentivized)
Primary care physicians (not always trained in women-specific nuance)
Nurse practitioners & midwives (often underutilized)
Telehealth platforms
Pharmacies
At-home diagnostics
The most eye-opening moment:
The average OB-GYN visit is ~7 minutes.
Not because clinicians don’t care.
Because reimbursement rewards volume over depth.
Implication:
If the system doesn’t pay for longitudinal, preventive, hormone-informed care — that care won’t scale.
We followed the money — because reimbursement is the operating system.
We covered:
CPT codes
RVUs (Relative Value Units)
The RUC Committee
Payer negotiations
Coverage decisions
Employer benefits design
Most people entering women’s health never learn this layer.
But reimbursement determines:
What gets built
What gets funded
What clinicians prioritize
What patients can access
Hard truth:
If menopause visits, fertility counseling, or complex hormone management aren’t reimbursed adequately, they will remain underprovided.
This is not a clinical issue.
It’s an economic one.
4. Business Models & Capital: Why the Funding Gap Persists
We broke down:
What differentiates Seed, Series A, Series C companies
Why later-stage women’s health companies are rare
How valuations are influenced by perceived market size
The impact of regulatory and payer risk on capital flows
Women’s health startups often face:
Longer payer sales cycles
Education-heavy markets
Cultural stigma
Regulatory ambiguity
Platform advertising restrictions
Capital flows toward predictability.
Women’s health is often framed as “risk.”
Reframe:
It’s not a small market. It’s a misunderstood one.
5. Product & Marketing: Building Responsibly in a Constrained Market
We discussed the difference between:
Responsible health marketing
vs.Growth-at-all-cost consumer tactics
In women’s health, you face:
Privacy sensitivity
Content moderation bias
Medical claim regulations
FDA considerations
Platform restrictions (especially around reproductive health)
The brands that succeed long-term:
Build trust slowly
Anchor in data
Avoid overclaiming
Invest in clinical credibility
Design for lifecycle engagement
Women’s health is not just a DTC opportunity.
It is a trust economy.
6. Regulation & Policy: The Lever Most People Ignore
Every major structural shift in women’s health traces back to:
CMS reimbursement changes
NIH funding allocations
FDA approval pathways
Congressional action
From new diagnostic codes to expanded maternal coverage — policy drives market formation.
Critical takeaway:
Policy isn’t adjacent to the business of women’s health.
Policy is the architecture underneath it.
If you want to build at scale, you must understand regulatory timelines and reimbursement pathways.
🩺 Expanding the Definition of Women’s Health
We also reframed the market itself.
Women’s health is not just reproduction.
It spans:
Cardiovascular disease (the #1 killer of women)
Alzheimer’s
Autoimmune disorders
Mental health
Oncology
Bone health
Hormone transitions across lifespan
When we narrow the category to fertility or birth control, we miss massive opportunity — and systemic risk.
🎯 The Structural Diagnosis
One of the biggest themes of the session:
The system is functioning exactly as designed.
It optimizes for:
Volume
Procedures
Billable events
Short visits
Fragmentation
It does not optimize for:
Preventive hormone care
Longitudinal female-specific health management
Cross-specialty coordination
Time-intensive counseling
That’s why innovation alone doesn’t fix the problem.
You have to redesign incentives.
Why This Matters for Your Career
If you work in women’s health — or want to — this framework changes how you think about:
Product strategy
Sales strategy
Fundraising
Policy advocacy
Employer benefits
Market timing
The professionals who rise in this space are the ones who understand both:
Clinical nuance
and
Economic architecture
The business of women’s health isn’t charity.
It’s incentive engineering.
And once you understand the system, you stop asking “Why is this broken?”
You start asking:
“Which lever do I pull?”
💡 Big Takeaway
“Understanding the business of women’s health isn’t just about knowing how care is delivered — it’s about understanding how money, policy, and incentives flow through the system. Until we change those levers, we can’t truly change outcomes for women.”
At the end of the conversation we shared how you can go deeper with us on all of these topics with the Women’s Health Mini-MBA. This is quickly becoming the gold-standard of education for the women’s health ecosystem.
Keep reading for details.
If you’re ready to join us, Sign Up Here
Your exclusive discount code (for $100 OFF - only to those from the webinar) - IWH100 - expires Monday, March 2nd at Midnight EST.
Don’t take it from us…
"The best investment you can make is in yourself." — Warren Buffett
Whether it's expanding your skills, building new relationships, or deepening your understanding of the industry — investing in yourself pays lifelong dividends. Unlike market swings or business risks, no one can take your growth away from you.
📣 Help Us Grow the Ecosystem
If this session resonated with you, I’d ask one small favor.
If there’s someone in your professional or social network who is curious about women’s health — a founder, clinician, investor, student, operator, policymaker, or someone trying to break into the space — please consider sharing the upcoming free sessions with them. The women’s health ecosystem only becomes stronger when more people understand how the system actually works. Education is leverage. And we’re intentionally making these sessions free so that access isn’t the barrier.
If you’re willing, post about it on LinkedIn or share it within your network. Here’s a sample caption and image you can use to make it easy:
Registration links for the next mini-MBA cohort that begins March 10th:
Sample Caption
I just attended The Business of Women’s Health 101 with @Jodi Neuhauser and it reframed how I think about the entire industry.
If you work in healthcare, startups, investing, policy — or want to — this is foundational knowledge.
It breaks down how money, policy, and incentives shape outcomes in women’s health — and why real change requires understanding the system, not just building within it.
Check out the next In Women’s Health mini-MBA that begins March 10th. Link in comments!
(insert this link in the comments: Women's Health Mini MBA | In Women's Health)
Registration Now Open for Women’s Health Mini-MBA
Exclusive Discount Below
As we discussed on the call, registration is now open for the industry’s only deep-dive into the business of women’s health - the In Women’s Health Mini-MBA.
The Women’s Health Mini-MBA is the product of 40+ years of experience, hundreds of hires, and thousands of hours of training, leading, educating, mentoring and coaching in our ecosystem.
There is nothing on the market like this.
This is the only course that looks at the business of healthcare through the lens of women’s health.
It’s the only course that:
Breaks down the complicated silos in healthcare
Covers the nuances of women’s health within our healthcare system
Gives you access to expert mentors and a strong community
Allows you to build your network with 100+ other talented leaders in the space
Provides an opportunity to learn from industry leaders
We have some exciting changes to the curriculum planned along with 5+ guest speakers in this cohort!
The 6-week Women’s Health Mini-MBA will include:
Week 1: Ecosystem: History, Overview, Opportunities + Challenges
Week 2: Care Delivery (Providers, Pharmacy, PBM etc)
Week 3: How Money Flows (Payers, Revenue Cycle, Reimbursement)
Week 4: Funding, Strategy + Business Models
Week 5: Product, Data and Marketing
Week 6: Regulatory, Government & Privacy
Class Structure:
Instructional video: Each week will include an asynchronous video to watch that gives you the “nuts & bolts” of a part of the American Healthcare system.
Live Session #1: Then, our live 2-hour class will bring that part of the healthcare system to life in real terms through the lens of women’s health — usually with a case study.
Live Session #2: We will continue examining the nuances of the week’s topic within women’s health and be joined by a guest speaker from the industry to share their 1:1 experience.
Friday Deep Dives: The cohort will spend this time with each other led by the course TA to network and dive deeper into some of the session topics from the week. These are once a week but are not mandatory.
Course Dates: March 10th- April 16th
The class will meet 12:00 -2:00 PM EST on session days. It will also be recorded so you can follow along asynchronously.
I provide a 100% satisfaction guarantee - attend the classes and if you’re not satisfied I’ll give you a refund.
Past guest speakers included:
Karla Loken, Medical Affairs Consultant
Melissa Reilly, CRO - Zeel
Colleen Foster, General Partner - Amboy Street Ventures
Amanda Johnson, Founder & CEO - Julie
Rebecca Bennett, Running for Congress - NJ-7
Guest speakers for this session will be announced shortly.
You’ll walk away with:
Access to 10+ industry leaders
30+ hours of instruction from the industry’s top executives
Lists of over 100+ people to follow in Women’s Health
List of key women’s health resources to follow and conferences to attend
An enhanced network of 100+ new women’s health leaders, connected by our private platform and a private Slack channel.
3-month membership to In Women’s Health including access to our function-based networks, private Slack community, real-time In Women’s Health Job Board with 115+ companies (a $177 value)
Contact information for key recruiters and hiring managers in the industry
List of key women’s health resources to follow and conferences to attend
Access to the real-time In Women’s Health Job Board with 115+ companies
Investment: $1,396
DISCOUNT: If you register before Monday at Midnight, you’ll get $100 off using the code IWH100.
Hurry, as this code expires Monday, February 23rd at Midnight EST.
Beyond the MBA and Mastermind with 51&
We’re building something bigger. 51& is uniting women’s voices, dollars, and influence to transform the healthcare system from the ground up. As part of our early community, you’ll gain access to member-only events, resources, and leadership opportunities that drive systemic change. We have limited availability left for our one-time, lifetime membership- $100 once and you’re a lifetime member!
And don’t miss The Five and One, our weekly newsletter delivering five stories and one big idea on the policies, research, and power structures shaping women’s health. It’s your front-row seat to the movement we’re building.
Additional Resources Mentioned in the Call:
Check out all of our other IWH Free Events - Subscribe to our Luma calendar so you don’t miss opportunities to connect with others in women’s health and industry leaders.
In Women’s Health Pro Membership- is your insider pass to the business of women’s health—real-time jobs, curated opportunities, and the strategic context you need to build, invest, and lead in the space.
In Women’s Health Newsletter - Join 6,200 industry executives and get our weekly newsletter for the latest women’s health career and leadership news and over 100+ jobs in women’s health each week. I have added each of you to this already!
In Women’s Health Talent Network - Add your free profile to our talent network. Don’t worry - we won’t share your information without contacting you first.
