Empowering People to Live a Healthy Life | Andrea Bloom | ConnectWell

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Andrea Bloom: Empowering People to Live a Healthy Life A native of Bay Area, Andrea Bloom the Founder and CEO of ConnectWell started the company with the intention to help people live better lives through empowering them to improve their health and well-being. The organization’s public-private partnership with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health guarantees access to a vast library of health and wellness content that is continually reviewed and updated to include the latest standard of care guidelines and scientific findings on health, wellness, and disease management.

Andrea was a 2020 task force member of the American Heart Association in order to engage and inform the greater Bay Area community when it comes to improving cardiovascular health by 2020. She founded a co-ed adult softball team to re-engage team members with a sport they enjoyed during their youth. With her husband and three children, Andrea enjoys hiking throughout the Bay Area, skiing and snow shoeing in Tahoe, and traveling.

She received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from University of California, Berkeley with departmental honors, high distinction in general scholarship, and Phi Beta Kappa and a Master in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Developing a Deep Skill Set in an Industry from the Ground Up As a child of a physician, Andrea’s exposure to the field of healthcare from a very early age became a springboard for her career and passion for helping people achieve well-being. After receiving her MBA from Harvard Business School, Andrea started her career in healthcare at Johnson and Johnson’s diabetes division in Silicon Valley in product marketing. On the product side of the business, she participated in researching the unmet needs of the market and in bringing new medical devices to people with diabetes to meet those needs. On the marketing side, Andrea became an expert in understanding the underlying causes of diabetes and

the stakeholders that help people manage their disease: doctors, diabetes educators, pharmacists, and the patient.

Identifying Trends and Acting on Them According to Andrea, the demands on the healthcare system have dramatically shifted from acute care to chronic care given the steep rise in the prevalence of chronic disease. Because chronic conditions are long-term health issues, people must get involved in managing their care in order to maintain their health. Observing these trends, Andrea eventually decided to found ConnectWell. She shifted her focus from disease management to wellness — empowering people to live well and incorporate healthy lifestyle habits into daily living. To empower people in their health and well-being, they need to have access to engaging, accurate, up-to-date, and expertly vetted health information. Andrea could see the digital revolution unfolding and that it would eventually hit the healthcare system — enabling the ability to scale health information for easy access, anytime and anywhere.

Assembling a Team with the Expertise for Success Given that the San Francisco Bay Area is an epicenter for health and wellness thought leadership, Andrea assembled a Scientific Advisory Board made up of subject matter experts in different areas of wellness. She built a team of talented, experienced individuals with diverse backgrounds who could hit the ground running and work in an entrepreneurial and collaborative environment. Together they created and deployed consumeroriented wellness programming in the areas of healthy eating, physical activity, stress management, sleep, and maternal health.

Forming a Partnership with a Leading Academic Institution Next, it was the need of the hour to partner with a leading academic institution that had deep experience in consumer-oriented health publications covering a wide range of health conditions. She found that partner in her undergraduate alma mater, UC Berkeley. For 35 years, the UC Berkeley School of Public Health has been a pioneer in providing evidencebased wellness information through their health and wellness publications. Andrea was introduced to Dr. John Swartzberg, who oversees the development of the school’s health and wellness publications and their large editorial board consisting of faculty and physicians from both UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco Medical School. Dr. Swartzberg and Andrea formulated a strategy in order to form a public-private partnership to digitize and consumerize the school’s vast collection of health and wellness publications. Both of them further expanded their team to include a Chief Medical Officer, Lead Health Writer, and Technical and User Experience Expert so that they could build an offering that would enable people to unlock their potential of reaching a higher level of health and well-being.

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