Bridging the Gap for Her Health
**Note - please excuse the typos. This transcript was automatically generated.**
Hetal Baman (00:00:01) - According to a 2020 study published in the Oncology Letters Journal globally, cervical cancer is the fourth most commonly diagnosed cancer amongst women. And it's especially common in low and middle income countries such as South Africa, India, China, and Brazil. Hundreds of thousands of new cases and deaths were reported worldwide in 2018. And they say that an estimated 11 million women from low and middle income countries will be diagnosed with cervical cancer in the next 10 to 20 years. These are significantly large numbers I'm talking about, but the question is, can we trust these numbers? Are these statistics even reliable? How can we rely on these statistics? If women within these countries may have never gotten a screening in their lifetime, what would the number be then? And even with these questions answered, what is a solution to these growing number of cases and deaths? These are all questions I asked Marissa Fairer.
Hetal Baman (00:01:08) - In today's interview, Marissa is the founder and CEO of Her Health eq, a nonprofit working to improve the health outcomes of women by providing essential medical equipment to developing regions around the world. She's a 22 year veteran of the MedTech industry, who is included among the top 100 women in MedTech by Medical Design and outsourcing in 2018. She was also included as a People Mavens top women activist to watch and a recipient of Africa Development Award in the same exact year. She currently serves on the board of Wellways Medical and Deep Look Medical, which are focusing on improving the diagnosis of breast cancer and ultrasound AI focused on preterm birth. My name is Hethel Laman and this is the Global Health Pursuit.
Hetal Baman (00:02:05) - Hey Marissa. Welcome. How are you? Welcome to my podcast studio. I, I'm great. Look, I'm pumped to have you on. I'll put in parentheses again, uh, because Marissa was on the first launch of the Global Health Pursuit Podcast and now just a couple years later, I knew I had to grab some of her time, some of your time. And we're gonna be talking all around women's health, cervical cancer, statistics, all the things. And honestly, somebody coming from the med tech engineering world, I really would love our listeners to learn a little bit more about your background because where you are right now, I think a lot of it is influenced by where you started out. So tell us a little bit about your story, Marissa.
Marissa Fayer (00:02:55) - Yeah, for sure. So I'm an engineer by background and my story is corporate for many, many years. Recruited straight OUTTA school, went into a medical device company, never left. I was in corporate for 15 years, several different companies and I loved it. I loved it. I was involved with developing the first 3D mammography system. I spent nine years at a women's health company, which is where a lot of my passion for women's health kind of started to come in. And I was in charge of mergers and acquisitions and new product development. All of these things. Loved it. Like, and I, quite honestly, I still love it, but after 15 years, had a bit of a burnout, didn't wanna return to an old position. I was out of country and they were giving more or less volunteer layoffs. And I took one, and then I started a consulting firm.
Marissa Fayer (00:03:45) - So for nine years I've been building a consulting firm while at the same time building a nonprofit. The idea for her healthy cue started when I was still working in corporate. Mm. So it's one of these stories where you have an idea, you do something internally and then many years later you think about it like, Hmm, I could probably be something. And so, I mean, I'm a very traditional corporate person. All of my consulting was corporate work. All of my work, even to date is very corporate. And I moved for one of the acquisitions that I was involved with in one of the positions. I moved to Costa Rica for several years. And so I was able to live in a different country, a middle income country, very different. And this was, this is not like touristy Costa Rica as it is right now. I mean, this was 13, 14 years ago.
Marissa Fayer (00:04:33) - The fancier restaurant was Applebee's. Um, much has changed since then, cuz I've been back many, many times. You mean as of as of even three months ago or two months ago. So it's much different certainly now, which is great, which is incredible. But having the experience of living in another country kind of opened my eyes up even more. And listen, I was traveled but not as traveled as living day to day in another country. And so I think like I was super basic and traditional, very corporate. My path was like coo o o of a massive medical device company. And who knows, maybe that is still the future, but that's like, I didn't know that there was other things outside corporate. I, ironically, I did come from an entrepreneurial family, but we didn't talk about it, so mm-hmm. corporate was the way life goes. Yeah.
Hetal Baman (00:05:20) - So moving into the philanthropy sector though, sometimes I think about me being at j and j for so long and then I always had this ask this question around, okay, we build these medical devices and they are great high tech, all of this stuff. But it's like, what are we thinking about in terms of our low and middle income countries right around the world? Yeah. Because it's just like, there's so many, I think there was this quote that was like, we build things for
Marissa Fayer (00:05:51) - 90% of our technology is made for 15% of the world. Yes.
Hetal Baman (00:05:55) - It was like 10 or 15% of the world. World.
Marissa Fayer (00:05:57) - Yeah. I talk about it quite often in, in a lot of my, a lot of my keynote. We've innovated and spent all this money for 15% of the world. So what about the other 85%?
Hetal Baman (00:06:07) - So what did you see at your company that you were working at before? Was there a philanthropic wing or were you trying to push boundaries?
Marissa Fayer (00:06:18) - Yeah, so there was years ago it wasn't very developed. So I created HO Logic gifts back. It was one of the first CSR programs when I was working there. I was in Costa Rica and we created there and we started to give back to the community and started to participate in things that were very aligned to us. And everyone was doing it in a small way and it was always like, let's do a walk and raise some money or let's help build some schools or things like that. And so created a much larger program. And not to say that it was the only in the first, but philanthropy back then was very, it went to the top nonprofits, so it went to the American Cancer Association and things like that. There wasn't this plethora of nonprofits or wasn't a talk about them many, many years ago.
Marissa Fayer (00:07:01) - And so from the perspective of what were corporations doing, I mean they were giving and they were giving to the same 20 organizations, which is wonderful. Unfortunately that left everybody else out. And so I just feel that when you're working in a country, you should give back to where you are locally. And so that was really important to me. But I mean, I have no philanthropic nonprofit background in the least. I mean, I barely still do because you have to remember that nonprofits are companies, right? They just don't make the owner myself a boatload of money. So nonprofits reinvest any profits back into the organization to continue to do well. And so they have to be run like a company. And many, many years ago they weren't. They were very like raise a lot of money, have huge overhead and things have gotten a lot more efficient now. But I mean, when I was down in Costa Rica, of course there's nonprofits and there's also a lot of philanthropy that people don't categorize in a nonprofit. So I don't wanna say that it all has to be generated through a specific nonprofit. You can donate food, you can donate clothes, you can donate your time, you can go to a soup kitchen, you can do all of these things. And those were still happening. But my concept of what I did with her healthy AQ kind of came out of that time.
Hetal Baman (00:08:16) - Right. So I wanna ask you, yeah, what was that story like when her Healthy Q started?
Marissa Fayer (00:08:24) - Yeah, so the seed point, like all awesome ideas happened in a bar with a friend of mine, . I mean, every great idea starts somewhere, especially in a bar. So this one just, it had legs. And so I was sitting with a very good friend of mine who I continued to do work with in Costa Rica. And she was saying like, women were dying of breast cancer because they were three hours outside the city. And while in Costa Rica its government subsidized healthcare in, its all government provided that the mammography machine broke down 10 years prior. And so they just never got around to getting it repaired or fixed or it was so old like they needed a new one. And the government, you know, like they just never got around to it. Hmm. And I knew that right before coming to Costa Rica, I developed the 3D mammography system knowing that the 2D systems were coming back, they were lined up against the wall in the factory and a lot of them, they were turned into 3D systems or they were turned into other low cost market products and things like that.
Marissa Fayer (00:09:21) - But there were still a lot of them available. So I facilitated a donation to Costa Rica and to this hospital specifically in limo. And that was the genesis of her healthy cue. And, and, and I kept going and kept going through corporate and, and eventually left and started a consulting firm. And I just kind of had this nagging feeling to think like, great, we did this once and what other pieces of equipment can be solved? What other healthcare issues can be solved? What other countries can deploy equipment such as either that for breast cancer, things like that. And so for me, women are always at the forefront of my mind. I'm a woman engineer, I was always involved with stem, you know, as I looked more and more into it, girls weren't going to school, not because they didn't want to and not because they didn't have the availability of it, they weren't going to school because in lower middle income countries, girls are the first ones pulled out of school.
Marissa Fayer (00:10:14) - When something happens, girls are the first one that are pulled outta school. When your mother, your grandmother, your aunt, your sister is sick or unfortunately you know, passed away. And so they are the ones that are pulled out to take care of the family. So I'm in healthcare, I'm not in education, I can't solve the education problem. Mm-hmm. , I can solve the healthcare problem. If the women, if the mothers and the sisters and the aunts and the grandmothers, if they're healthy, they will continue to send their daughters to school. There are very few people and or countries and yeah, I don't even think it's a country thing. It's more of a personal thing. Like there are very few mothers who don't want their girls to be educated. There's very few of them. So I needed to enable the girls to go to school cuz those girls are gonna be the ones that find the cure to cancer.
Marissa Fayer (00:11:05) - They're gonna solve problems, they're the ones that are going to create peace, but they need an education to do that and they need a safe place to do that. So that's how her health AQ started. So I wanted to tackle the non-communicable diseases that are affecting lower middle income countries, specifically related to women. So heart disease, maternal health, cancers that affect women such as cervical cancer, breast cancer, skin, even skin cancer, lung cancer. These are things that with equipment and even used equipment, yeah. Can be screened or treated or potentially prevented with pieces of equipment that are rather basic for us in the US and in Europe. But there's such redundancy and waste in the healthcare system that an equipment that has a 25 year useful life often gets replaced in three years.
Hetal Baman (00:11:56) - Oh my gosh, I did not know that.
Marissa Fayer (00:11:58) - So what do you do with the 22 years of useful life? So a lot of times they do get repurposed and they do get resold and they do get redeployed to lower cost countries. But there's always a gap of what actually gets deployed versus what it was originally sold. So there's a lot of fascinating, really great pieces of equipment sitting in landfill or because it has a scratch in our very, very fancy hospitals. Like, listen, I live in New York City. Like I understand it. If I'm paying all this money to go to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, I don't want a dingy piece of equipment sitting there. And I get it, I get it. It's perception. Mm-hmm . But it doesn't matter if there's a scratch on, it doesn't, nobody cares as
Hetal Baman (00:12:40) - Long as it works.
Marissa Fayer (00:12:41) - Yeah. Right. And especially listen, not saying that it's a of a lower quality going to any other country, it is literally of the same quality except there's a scratch on it. Nobody cares. So why not redeploy those pieces of equipment to save women's lives? So that's kind of how her Healthy Q started.
Hetal Baman (00:13:02) - Amazing. So you talked about screening. There was one video that you had posted from one of your webinars and you talked about the frequency of women being screened in low and middle income countries. Mm-hmm. . And I wanna ask you, what is that frequency? What could it be and what is it right now?
Marissa Fayer (00:13:23) - So it depends really where you are. Let's just be clear. So it depends where you are. It depends on the infrastructure. It also depends where in the country you live. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So if you're living in the capital and you're near the hospital and you have a great job and it provides health insurance, even though most countries and lower middle income countries are subsidized, it's, it's a universal healthcare, right? So even if you have that, you're probably going for healthcare screenings. 25% of what we are in what's considered developed countries. So we go every year, every two years for a pap smear. There are women around the world that will maybe have one or two in their entire lifetime if they're lucky. Pap smears are able to detect cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is one of the slowest growing cancers in the world. It's also one of the only cancers right now that there is a vaccine for.
Marissa Fayer (00:14:09) - Hmm. There is very significant screening options available. There's very significant easy ways to remove lesions that don't require hospitalization. They're outpatient because it's so slow moving, you can find them. Cervical cancer is also one of the cancers that is known to be generated from a virus, from HPV V. You screen for hpv, chances are you're gonna have abnormal cervical cancer cells. So there are things like that. So let's talk about breast cancer. There are in some countries, maybe two mammography systems in the entire country. We're talking about countries that are potentially just as large as the United States or just as large as the East Coast, up and down. Mm-hmm. and one, maybe two, maybe 10 if you're lucky. In private hospitals, mammography machines to screen entire countries for breast cancer. Women over 40 in the United States gets them every year covered by insurance. Like just imagine literally entire countries, women are never in their entire lifetime getting a breast cancer screen.
Marissa Fayer (00:15:17) - And by the way, when you can actually feel cancer, it's probably, most of the time it's stage three, there are only four stages. And so it's very hard, very costly, very, very tough on a family, especially if you're in a lower middle income country. To be able to treat that, you have to take time away from a family. You probably are going through a significant round of chemo and radiation and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you're not gonna be helping the family or revenue generating and all of these things. And unfortunately that is, that is something that most women just say, okay. Like it is what it is. They don't know that they're gonna die from it. And this is something that can be screened with a handheld ultrasound. This, this is something that can be screened even with at home personal checks.
Marissa Fayer (00:16:06) - It's wonderful that we have all this routine screening, but routine screening has to be accessible to everybody else. But it also needs to be, as you were saying before, we've innovated technology for 15% of the population. It's not gonna work. A mammography machine rolling around Tanzania not gonna work. It's not, it's in Darla. Like they have a few units, there's maybe two in Arusha. Yeah. Like I've done the drive around Tanzania twice, like from Darla to Arusha and back. I mean it's long. And I was in an S U V, so it's days. So can we expect every woman to do that? No, you can't. Mobile vans are fabulous and I think they're highly, highly effective. But like you're gonna need 10 of them roaming around one country. So I mean, I think there needs to be technology that's created for the rest of the world to make it more accessible. And listen, we weren't able to do this 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago, but we're able to do it now and we need to make sure that this equipment is accessible. And the fact that we continue to upgrade is incredible. Like in the us, in Europe, in Asia, we continue to upgrade our equipment, which is amazing. But that equipment that we upgrade needs to go somewhere else and not in a landfill.
Hetal Baman (00:17:30) - I mean all of the factors, right? It's like the infrastructure, it's the, the training, it's the education, it's all the things. I read a paper where, I'm just gonna read this paragraph that is around screening. It says population screening for cervical cancers in regions of low socioeconomic status and low resource settings remains elusive. Mm-hmm. , I feel like the key word is elusive. The cervical cancer screening coverage in southern Africa ranges between 4.1 and 38%. What a huge difference.
Marissa Fayer (00:18:03) - Well, so if you go, if you go into Cape Town or you go into Joburg, then there's a lot more of a concentration. You have to understand like in, in the US our suburbia is still networked. That's not anywhere else. So maybe the 38% is closer to those cities or in those cities. And then you go to other countries and or regions that are even tangential. You go to Mozambique right next door. Mm-hmm. , I'm sure they're at the 4% range. Yeah. It's startling. I mean listen, like I think it's still startling in our own country that there's regions that don't have screening. But then you think about the accessibility here and then you think about what that looks like translated across the world. And like I don't ever want people to think that the images are, that are sometimes on TV of like starving children. That is absolutely not the case. I mean, sure there are around the world, and I'm not gonna diminish that, but it's a completely
Hetal Baman (00:19:02) - Different conversation too. It's right, these
Marissa Fayer (00:19:04) - Are middle income countries that have disposable capital and have capital. And the first, when you have disposable capital, the first thing you spend on is healthcare. Right? This is money that is ready to be spent. These are people who pay for private healthcare. These are people who will travel four hours to go to a healthcare screening. They will do that because it is that important. We need to make sure that there's accessibility and that there's access. And that's one of the things that we make sure is really important with her healthy cue. One of the things that we do is with all pieces of equipment, we make sure that there is a service contract in place either with us or with the company that we are working with. So we're not just dumping equipment somewhere and saying like, good luck. Bye-bye. Like I'm sorry that a part breaks and you can never get it again. And like that's
Hetal Baman (00:19:53) - Exactly what I was gonna ask.
Marissa Fayer (00:19:55) - Yeah. So like we, we provide a multi-year service contract no matter what. We provide training, we provide installation if we need to. A lot of what we're leaning towards a lot more are some handheld systems where it's much easier, it's much more portable. Things are much more aligned. You know, you can get them online, you can do multi trainings. We can hopefully get them translated into multiple languages, things like that. And we work with our partners to do that. And we don't do that ourselves. So we have partners that help us with training. We have partners that help us with service. We have partners that help us with installation. I mean, I'm not going somewhere and trying to figure out how to hook a machine up. I mean like, I know I'm an engineer, but like that's just like, it's way above my pay grade.
Marissa Fayer (00:20:40) - I don't know. Like I don't know how to do that. And there's experts and the other thing is we wanna, if possible create these jobs in country, most of the time these jobs are also going to women. Mm-hmm. . So it gives us an opportunity to train people in country to provide now these skills that they can use other places and expand upon. And so those is the things that we focus on. There's a lot of medical equipment and I've seen it, like I've seen it in developing countries where it's just like we donated it, we feel great about it. And then like it's in a closet cuz a board breaks. Well, okay, well tell us what's, tell us what's going we'll, send somebody out. And it's, trust me, it's not like that easy of a process, but it happens. And if it's a board, we'll get a replacement or we'll find somebody who can fix it or something like that.
Marissa Fayer (00:21:31) - Because what's the point in us feeling great about what we do when it worked for three months and that's it. So what we do is for a minimum of two years, we require every quarter that impact metrics are sent back to us. So how many people were the equipment was used on. And if all of a sudden we get something that we're not expecting, like a zero that causes a conversation, obviously we want people to reach out to us earlier and tell us like something's wrong and things like that. But that's not always the case. And so by reporting metrics then, then they can do that. Yes. Can they be made up? Of course they can. Like, like I can, I can create any number of scenarios, but most people are good people. We have to just go on trust and yes, sometimes we will just come in and pop in and show up or a partner's will, or we'll tell you we're coming by and like a random fda, I Right, right, right.
Marissa Fayer (00:22:22) - You're gonna, you're not gonna hide that there's a machine not working here. Like I, I get that. So we want this to work and, and that's also part of our screening protocol. Like we will choose companies and clinics that value the equipment. And that's one of the reasons we actually have gone away from a straight donation. Because when we get something for free, it's not fully valued. Yes. So if there is some cost associated and now you have to pay quote unquote pay it back and get your return on investment. Well, okay, so I mean we handle logistics, we handle service, we handle all of these other things. But there, there's, there's a fee associated with that. And we used to do the give it to everything away for free. The model just generally doesn't work and most countries are switching away from that because there is capital to spend, not boatloads of capital to spend, but there is some amounts of capital to spend and they're willing to partner with nonprofits that are able to help them do that.
Marissa Fayer (00:23:23) - And we partner with people, listen, we have a screening protocol that's pretty extensive that asks like, why do you wanna do this? Like why do you, why are you creating a breast cancer screening program? Why are you creating a maternal health clinic? And it's all because they wanna help. They wanna help the community. So they're going to take care of those pieces of equipment. That's kind of oftentimes how we find a lot of the places that we're working with because they're people who know each other. This is it. It turns out this is a very small community and while you might not first degree know somebody guaranteed you can second degree find somebody that knows them.
Hetal Baman (00:23:59) - Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent. In terms of the targeting of specific clinics that are asking for these donations or Yeah. Equipment mm-hmm. , what's the process like? Is it like they apply to get the piece of equipment? Do you have a partner?
Marissa Fayer (00:24:18) - So it's all of the above and we're gonna eventually get to a point where we're just gonna make kind of list and put out RFPs and say, we have this. Who needs this? Let's get in contact. We're also building out network partners and also with larger nonprofits. Hopefully eventually one day like we're a partner with Doctors Without Borders because while a lot of times that they're running disaster relief, they're also running sustainable reoccurring screenings for general healthcare. A lot of people see them in disaster relief. Mm-hmm. . But that's only a small portion of actually what they do. So that's just one example when people know that name. So that's kind of how we're going about it. But a lot of times it's us saying like, Hey, we have 10 ultrasounds sitting ready to be deployed, which we literally do. I have 10 handheld ultrasounds ready to go and 20 more behind that.
Marissa Fayer (00:25:11) - Great reach out. Or we put something out online or we are connected to some people and say, Hey, who'd in this region that needs them? Or things like that. We've launched a massive cervical cancer screening program. It's called 10 for 10, 10 countries. We've already deployed one country in Costa Rica because I thought that it was important to go back to where we started. And it was actually 10 years since I kind of left, so it was kind of ironic. And so that was something that was important to me. But we have nine more countries to go, so we need partners in, in, in nine different countries that want cervical cancer screening can help us move that forward. And so it'll morph, it'll change to how we approach it as we continue and get into to sustainable purchasing with hospitals and with med device companies. We'll know three months in advance what's coming our way so we can put out the notice to say, Hey, who needs five ultrasound systems coming from Spain so that it doesn't actually have to come back to us.
Marissa Fayer (00:26:11) - Maybe we just deployed direct when these are, these are things that we can determine, you know, who needs a mammography machine. And we can almost put out like a call to say, we know we're gonna have four of these ready. Let's do the logistics before so that we're not doing the logistics right after we find it the last minute. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , it just helps us plan too. I mean to be clear, when you come down to it, I'm a project manager and that's what this is. It's blocking and tackling it's project managing at its finest obviously just at a different level.
Hetal Baman (00:26:43) - Right.
Marissa Fayer (00:26:44) - And that's what partnerships are. I just think about it like if you think about it in the context of corporate, each partner is like another department. It's another department you have to work with. And that's how when you're thinking about corporate and like, oh my God, I might have this idea or I might be developing this. Like, yeah, you just think about these are different departments, these are different people, these are different stakeholders. It all relates back to everything that we've all kind of learned. Mm-hmm.
Hetal Baman (00:27:06) - . In terms of the partners here in the states that you work with, like the hospitals and the med device companies, I'm sure you give like a criteria of, okay, well the piece of equipment can't be so high tech that it can't be used in this specific area. How do you go about that?
Marissa Fayer (00:27:26) - Yeah, so I mean listen, there's very few pieces of equipment that can't be deployed somewhere. So while a lot of it might go to a capital city because they have the infrastructure to support it, so mm-hmm , an MRI machine is a beast to mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm have to relocate, there needs to be certain shielding in place and all of these things. So those things are a little bit harder. They're gonna go to a capital city that has stable infrastructure and they're gonna go to a country that has the stable infrastructure to support it. They're probably not going to drc, but they might go to South Africa. It really depends on kind of where they are. When we do project deployments, we like to focus not in the capital because while there's not as much access as we necessarily might have here in the capital, there's more access than anywhere else.
Marissa Fayer (00:28:11) - I'm not talking about like remote in the bush, I'm talking about our suburbs, what we consider suburbs. Mm-hmm and which are still very difficult to get into the city. And when we are doing multi equipment install, fine, we'll do two or three in the capitol and then we'll do the rest around because there still needs to be access near the population centers. We're not naive in that. And we also want the most women impacted by the technology. And so that's one of the reasons why, we'll, we'll kind of scatter it throughout, but there's very few technologies that are non-applicable. Some of them are just easier done a different way. I spend a significant amount of my time just generally in continuously now in breast cancer, mammography is the standard of care, so is ultrasound. And ultrasound is often much more portable than a mammography machine.
Marissa Fayer (00:29:02) - While at a standard of care in the US and in Europe and, and trust me, I developed it, I am highly partial to it. It is not portable. There is infrastructure that is needed such as specific power to power it and continuous power. A handheld ultrasound that can potentially be battery powered or just plugged in and charged every night or something like that. And it's mobile. It can go in like a little suitcase, like literally a purse. I mean that's potentially more applicable to a greater population. It's also mobile, which means you can do it in multiple sites. So those are the things that sometimes when we think about, there's new types of scans and eye breast, which is a little handheld thing, there's nimi, it's based on thermal technology. These are new technologies that are not necessarily standard of care in the US but they're just as efficacious and there's no reason not to use them.
Marissa Fayer (00:29:55) - So sometimes we partner with those types of companies to get their equipment out into the world and maybe it's a first generation and they're now on their fourth generation, but their first generation still work and they're still highly applicable. So let's get their first generations out that they don't necessarily wanna sell because they wanna sell the fourth generation, but the first generations are just as good and they've been updated with the new technology oftentimes and especially the new software. So maybe it's a little bit older of a version when you don't have it and you want it, you don't care that it's version one or version four, it's like a computer. You don't care if it's last year's model of this year's model, unless you're programming games on there, it doesn't matter. So it's the same thing. And those are the types of things that we try to deploy because listen, I am all for new equipment. Like I will take all the new equipment that anybody wants to give to us. , I'm not big-ish, I will take it for sure, but a lot of what we stand on is part of the sustainability and making sure that there's sustainability in purchasing and their sustainability in new equipment and things like that. And in the supply chain. And we are a solution to give companies and hospitals and clinics and doctor's offices the useful life of their equipment continues to go on. Do you
Hetal Baman (00:31:09) - Have any trouble, for example, if there was a health entity like the fda, right? Do you have any trouble donating equipment and is there any backlash?
Marissa Fayer (00:31:21) - Yeah, so sometimes, I mean obviously we're taking FDA or CE approved equipment, so that helps. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. , there's a lot of grandfathering that happens. This is why we also partner with companies that are in country. Okay. They know we just had to go through this in Costa Rica. I mean it has to be registered with the health authorities, right? I don't know that process. I don't wanna learn it. Do I have to learn this in what 167 countries are? You kidding? Like I simply just don't have the brain capacity for that. I don't. And it's not a useful use of my time. And where there are experts who know how to do this in country, they do this. This is every day of their life. Listen, we're also a nonprofit so it also helps that we can oftentimes get this in with nonprofit clearance. We get this in with partners in country.
Marissa Fayer (00:32:06) - It helps. But it is a process. Every country is a new process. And as we continue to grow, certainly building out our knowledge and regulatory and building out our knowledge in each country or each region at least is is something that will we strive to achieve. But it's work. And the other thing is, one of the great things is we've partnered with U P s Humanitarian who helps with a lot of the logistics. I don't know how to ship and I have to be very clear, I had to figure out how to ship something last year. I never wanna do that again. It was not smooth to be clear. But like I don't realistically know how to do that. There are literally thousands of experts at UPS humanitarian that know how to do that. And they take care of it and they take care of it. When you get to the new country too, this is why the value of partnership is the model that we continue to grow on. Because I don't wanna build up a hundred person team here. That's not efficient. That's how nonprofits became very inefficient. Mm-hmm. . And that I come from a corporate background, I wanna be efficient and using somebody, a logistics partner who's an expert in that, that's just efficient
Hetal Baman (00:33:12) - That you don't have to train a million times over again. Correct.
Marissa Fayer (00:33:16) - Right.
Hetal Baman (00:33:17) - So as you're growing and deploying more and more equipment, more and more countries every year, how do you manage all of the partners and the day-to-day tasks?
Marissa Fayer (00:33:30) - I'm grateful that I'm very organized and, and let's just be clear, a lot of things fall through the cracks and I thank God have a good team that's behind me in helping out. I have a great board that's helping me out. So this is not a one person show. Certainly I'm a spokesman for the company and I'm grateful and happy to be, but it's not just me doing this. And so we continue to build out our team and our skills and so that's how we do it. We have checklists and how we go about things and that's just normal. I also wake up at four o'clock in the morning randomly think of something, write it down, and then try to go back to sleep. So I mean it's a lot of that panic as well. So I think we'll get to a much more systemized process as we continue to grow. But it's, you just continue. I mean it's a lot of great people doing a lot of good work. That's what it is. We know our partners, we communicate with them often, we keep in touch. And that's the only way that partnerships continue.
Hetal Baman (00:34:26) - Yeah, I think that's the only way you grow. So I know you mentioned 10 for 10.
Marissa Fayer (00:34:30) - 10 for 10. Yep. 10
Hetal Baman (00:34:32) - For 10. Is there anything else that you're working on right now that is super exciting?
Marissa Fayer (00:34:39) - Yeah, so 10 for 10 is a really exciting project that we're working on. It's a screeny of cervical cancer in 10 different countries, so 10 pieces of equipment per country. And so we're gonna impact 500,000 women's lives every year, which is very exciting. Right now we have up to 30 pieces of handheld ultrasounds for maternal screening ready to go. So anybody knows, we're happy to deploy those to you. And that's exciting. So we're growing our maternal health screening. Handheld ultrasounds can also be used on so many other things, heart disease, maternal health, potentially even breast cancer screening, all of these things. So there's a huge demand in the market for ultrasounds. So that's exciting. And so we're growing that out. We're also continuing to grow out our heart disease. So heart disease is greatly affecting middle income countries. That's because everyone's starting to live longer, which is wonderful.
Marissa Fayer (00:35:27) - But now we have sugary products and obesity and a lot of sedentary life, which we didn't have as as much many years ago. And so heart disease, especially in women, is coming up and it actually presents much differently in women than it does in men. So there needs to be screening for that end treatment. So those are some of the things that we're really focused on. We are hoping to go back to India soon and continue to relaunch our breast cancer screening program. That's actually a revenue generating program that we're super excited about. So it's revenue generating for both us and the doctor. So at the end of our agreement, they get to keep the equipment. So that's a really novel way for nonprofits to start thinking is how can they start generating revenue for both themselves and the physicians? Because when they're making more money, they're incentivized just to continue to do the screenings.
Marissa Fayer (00:36:19) - Our goal is to have women have access to screenings and treatments and everything, and prevention. So in order to do that, doctors, nurses, clinicians, they also need to be incentivized. Like we understand what this is. Also with breast cancer screening, most of the screening's happening by women. Why not have the opportunity to employ more women? Even if it's not directly the doctors, there needs to be a nurse there. Mm-hmm. , there needs to be somebody taking the information. These are jobs that are created kind of indirectly. Those are some of the projects that we're working on. We're always looking for new partners. We're always looking to grow. I mean, we're a nonprofit. I'll have to be remiss if I didn't say like we're always fundraising, obviously. And and our thing is we're look for corporate partners that wanna grow with us. So it is a financial commitment, but it's also strategic alignment and like engaging your employees. We are happy to have people visit us in country. We are happy to have people join us in share marketing campaigns and get the word out there. We're happy for people to make other connections to continue the work that we're doing. Those are just as valuable as monetary contributions. Often these are people that we're looking to continue to grow with. And so always looking for those.
Hetal Baman (00:37:35) - The point that you've made around women, basically giving them jobs and opportunities to work, I see that actually helping the future generations because it's almost like educating them. They're able to go home, educate their daughters, and then their daughters and it's like, wow, you're creating like a ripple effect.
Marissa Fayer (00:37:54) - Well, that's what I want because it allows the girls to go to school. It allows them to get educated. It allows them to see a role model of a woman working. And it allows them to aspire to that as well. Listen, I'm not saying that we work in poverty situations because we actually typically do not. We work in middle income where it is not guaranteed that that woman is going to be working or at a higher paying job. So let's show these children, both boys and girls, what, what's possible. Because when you show them what's possible, it's just generally not. Even if it's in school, it's outta school. It's more educated, they're more open, they can see what's available. I mean, these are the opportunities that we wanna create. There has to be a cycle that's broken somehow or changed. And that's what we are empowered to do. And that's what we're working to do, is to provide access. We're not working to directly change lives. That happens automatically. And we know that like I don't wanna insert my privileged white woman status into anybody else's life. We're just here to provide access to healthcare. Everything else takes care of itself. It honestly does.
Hetal Baman (00:39:05) - Yeah. And I wanna say thank you for that because in my own family, I have a close relative. She's from India and I wanna say it was two years ago, had colon cancer. Ugh.
Marissa Fayer (00:39:18) - Does
Hetal Baman (00:39:19) - She? Yeah. And back in India, I don't think she's ever gotten screened.
Marissa Fayer (00:39:25) - But, but let's to be clear, colon cancer screening is very rare. Even in the US it's not as mainstream as it should be.
Hetal Baman (00:39:31) - That's so interesting. Yeah. And I feel like that's like you doing this for cervical cancer, it's like on, yeah. On the other hand, colon cancer, it's just so interesting cuz the doctor was like, if if you just got screened like a couple years ago, it would've been fine. So she's, she's great. She's doing great's great. Still has to go for treatment and stuff, but she's great. But yeah, I mean, you know, these kind of things like hit home, especially in immigrant families, you just, you just don't even know. You don't even think about doing that until you feel something,
Marissa Fayer (00:40:06) - Right? And that's why, listen, prevention is always the first line of defense. And yes, we often deploy treatments, treatment devices, but you can do systematic screenings. Well then great, isn't that better? There's no reason based on geography that somebody's healthcare and life should be different. And that's some of the gap that we're working to address. It doesn't matter where you live, you should still have access to quality healthcare. And that's very much what we believe.
Hetal Baman (00:40:39) - This was an amazing conversation. Thank you so much, Marissa, for your time. Thank
Marissa Fayer (00:40:43) - Thank you
Hetal Baman (00:40:45) - Thank you for listening to this episode. If you'd like to learn more about today's topic and our guest today, head over to the show notes to get access to resources, links, and ways you can get involved in the pursuit for global Health. And if you love this episode, don't forget to write me a review on Apple Podcast and rate the podcast on Spotify. It helps me get in front of more people just like you and continues to elevate the causes that we are so passionate about. I'll see you in the next one.