2024 MM+M Women of Distinction preview: A case for female-led med research

Hey, it’s Marc. Earlier this year, the Biden administration launched the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research. The president’s executive order was designed to ensure that women’s health is integrated and prioritized across the federal research portfolio and budget. Sadly, that has not been the case until now. For instance, while heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, only a third of the participants in clinical trials are female. Likewise, 78% of those with autoimmune disease are women, yet just 7% of the NIH’s rheumatoid arthritis budget in 2019 went to women-focused research. How is it that women, who account for 52% of the population, have been left so far behind in medical research? That’s the question that drove Carolee Lee in 2020 to found the group WHAM, or Womens Health Access Now. According to Carolee, the reason for the aforementioned disparities comes down to a lack of data about the economic costs, benefits, and social impacts of attention to sex and gender in health research. Change also starts with dialogue, and there’s a lot that marketers can do through communications and media to change this. This week on the show, Carolee gives Lecia Bushak a preview of her keynote for this Thursday’s MM+M Women of Distinction ceremony. The ceremony starts at 8 am at The Lighthouse at Pier 61 in NYC, and Carolee will talk more about the remaining gaps in women-focused medical research, including her efforts to establish the data that could impact this situation, as well as the opportunity for medical marketers. And Lecia’s also here with a health policy update… Hi Marc, today I’ll talk about how states are starting to craft new laws around AI regulation, including in healthcare, in the absence of federal regulation. And Jack, what’s trending on healthcare social media? this week we’re talking about the Tribeca film festival’s Healthcare content, Jake Gyllenhaal’s legal blindness and the Sleep tips that actually work on tiktok. M&M’s women of Distinction event is being held this Thursday, June 13th at the Lighthouse at Pierce 61 in Chelsea Piers. And here with me today is the keynote speaker for the events Carolee Lee CEO and founder of Women’s Health Access matters or Wham The women of distinction program now going on its ninth year seeks to celebrate the women leaders who have impacted the organizations in the significant way as well as advanced the cause of women in healthcare as a whole. There’s no better example of that than Carolee among her accomplishments. She launched Wham to spearhead a new way of encouraging investments in women’s health an area that’s historically been overlooked and overfunded Wham focuses on providing data on the economic benefits of investing in women’s health research and it started to move the needle on some of the issues. Thanks so much for being here. Karalee. It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for including me. Now. I learned a statistic the other week that I somehow hadn’t known before and not many people might be aware of but obviously throughout history women have largely been excluded from clinical trials and it wasn’t until 1993 that the FDA actually officially mandated inclusion of women in research and all of this is to say that you know the healthcare world. Doesn’t actually know that much about women’s health or why certain experience disparities exist, you know, there’s a lot of statistics around women having more higher risk of autoimmune diseases than men and you know, there’s a lot of statistics around women feeling dismissed in the healthcare space among Healthcare Providers, and I wanted to ask you how some of these statistics and disparities inspired you to do work in the women’s health space. Well, first of all, you’re absolutely correct in the statements that you made it has been a very long time. It wasn’t in 1993 and fact that President Clinton did sign the revitalization act in to law and what that did was actually said guidelines. It wasn’t even we’ve learned a mandate and those guidelines required that women be included in clinical trials and research and although some changes have been made in the 30s most researchers and many in the medical community will tell you not really significantly and not really enough and so we’ll come back to that in a minute or two. But let’s go to the disparities or discrepancies that you identified or started to talk about what I realized in running a business which I did for 30 years of my life was that my business was 85% women. And so when any of my employees were not at work, I understood the economic impact of that and that kind of stayed with me and registered and then the other part of my background is that I was on the board of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation a wonderful Foundation that has had a great impact in decreasing breast cancer the incidence of breast cancer and women and I I served on that board for 25 years. So I understand research and I understand the economic impact of business and women not being there. So we need women to be healthy. And why is that? Well, let’s frame this women are 52% of the population 51% of the workforce. Own 60% of the wealth in the country make 85% of the spending decisions and 80% of the healthcare decisions women Drive economies, if women are healthy and this is true in all societies Society is healthier and therefore the economic gains are better and one of the goals of your organization Wham is to provide data on some of these economic benefits of investing in women’s health research and to essentially build a data-driven case for accelerating women’s health research. Can you tell me why it’s important to underscore this economic impact when it comes to getting people’s attention to start making changes here. Yeah. That’s a great question. So when I first stumbled upon a lot of this these different data points and you mentioned started to mention like autoimmune is 80% women and all timers by the way is 66% of the 66% of the population has Alzheimer’s or women women are twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s men long cancer. For example The number one killer of women it’s not breast cancer. In fact lung cancer kills more women than cervical ovarian uterine cancer combined non-smoking white women are twice as likely to have lung cancer as non-smoking white men in each of these instances that I’ve just given you. We don’t know why we know the statistics, but we don’t have the answers as to why are there these disparities and inequalities that exist and we have no idea that’s where the research comes in if we have research on women, we would be able to explain some of these different disparities and discrepancies and probably be able to focus on fixing them. That’s why we feel so incredibly focused on research and data. Let me tell you how we got to the data. I brought together a group of business women because what I realized was up until that time all the data that I had was very anecdotal or was also factual like some of the data that I just gave you. But no one knew if you can’t answer the why and you don’t know who’s doing the data or where it’s coming from or what percent of it is is that research to the total? Well, then you you really don’t have you’re talking about equality inequality. Sorry in inequality inequity or social justice all of which are true and all of which are part of these issues but data drives business decisions and data drives these decisions. So for example instead of me just telling you that women are twice as likely to die of a heart attack as a man in the first year after a heart attack. What if I said to you that only four percent of nih’s budget is focused on studying women and heart disease. If heart disease is the number one killer of women if you’re running a business, would you allocate for percent? I don’t think so. So if you start looking at the data and you start realizing well this data not only in terms of how much is allocated and how much women are affected. But also what are the outcomes you start looking at this if you change if you are to accelerate research in women, what would that look like and what what might the impact be Absolutely and Wham has put out reports on this and sort of examined, you know what that benefit would be and for example, you found that investing 350 million dollars in women’s health research could generate 14 billion dollars for our economy. Can you talk a little bit about what else you found when it comes to return on investment or Roi for women’s health research. Well, first of all, we found that actually it’s a better return clearly because some of the returns are like, you know, 4,000% because the amount of money the money is so small that if you were to double that amount of money, which I’m going to get to in that 350 million and that’s how you got to the 14th business women that I brought together sat around the table and said, how was it possible? Remember I gave you those numbers the 52% of 31 percent. How is it possible that we’re only allocating 350 million, which is a very small percent of nih’s budget to studying women 52% of our population. And so what we the first thing was that we did was take four disease areas that we knew would affect women in their lifetime. So autoimmune brain health cancer and cardiovascular disease. and those four diseases are the represent that 350 million that NIH allocates just studying just women in those diseased areas. And if you double that number that that from those for disease areas, so it’s not you know NIH is total budget. But in those were diseased areas, that’s how you get to the 14 billion and that has huge obviously huge impact back, you know, not only to women in their families but to businesses and that’s why we are so intent on making sure obviously most importantly to the women themselves and their lives that the acceleration takes place and fortunately President Biden, which I’m sure you’re aware of launched the White House initiative on women’s health and women’s health research. And if you accelerate research, which he is now focused on and has a whole department and and ahead or an initiative Beyond a department and and if we can actually look at some of the money said he’s allocated. Well, maybe we’ve already doubled that’s her 50 million dollar investment. So we’re very very excited by the administration’s attention to these issues, which I know Wham and others are obviously partly responsible for heightening the awareness of Yeah, absolutely and you know sort of on that front it’s one thing to talk about needing change and and talk about these are the positive benefits of you know, enacting D. And I policies and moving the needle on health disparities, but it’s another thing to actually make a tangible clear impact you were named to times inaugural 2024 time 100 Health list of the 100 most influential people for making that clear impact. Can you talk a little bit about some of the tangible changes that you’ve accomplished in the women’s health space? Sure well to start with when we started the four reports and we had commissioned the Rand Corporation to help reduce them. We had no idea what they’d find. And so let’s be clear. You know, when you do something like that. You don’t know if it’s going to be good or bad. So the first thing that I’ll say is by producing those reports, we produce the first tangible and and the first reports that really focused on the economic impact and as I said, not just the inequity or the inequality so we the first thing that we did a lot of this is about communication so it is about marketing and media it is about how do you phrase? How do you Encompass? How do you describe an issue that you’re trying to change and what we’re trying to change is this conversation from one of social justice to one of data-driven Economics? Well that immediately changes the conversation. And so I think the first thing that we did and that we continue to do is drive this conversation to be economically based. Not just emotionally or inequality or inequity based. Although it is those things let’s be clear. That’s not the point one needs to learn how to communicate in ways that can be that can create positive change. The other thing that we have done is we have something we call the way I’m collaborative which has brought together the leading researchers around the country in the objective there is to help them first all by creating opportunities for them to work with one another and integrate their work perhaps and collaborate with one another and that’s very important to us and and finding others because there aren’t enough researchers actually doing this work because it hasn’t paid very well and so we need to we need to drive that interest further and we’re also working on the Wham investment collaborative which is going to To try to drive the 2% of VC money that’s allocated to women own women-run businesses to 4% And in order to do these things. We do a lot of convenings. We bring together leaders from government from Academia from business and we did a wonderful convening last June just about a year ago to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the revitalization act and in that we created what we call our three not 30 goals and what are the three not three goals. Well, the first goal was double the budget that’s 350 million to the 14 and thank you President Biden. I think we’re on our way to that. The second part of that first goal is the 2% to the 4% If we don’t invest in companies that are developing diagnostic devices modalities for the health of women. We’re never going to drive that 2% higher. You’re not going to have the attention that you need in the kind of care that you need for women and the third three not 30 goal is mine the data and in that case we’re creating. Accountability indexes as to who is following the rules who is not so there are a lot of rules that people are supposed to be following whether in research or in the publishing world. You’re not supposed to publish a document or a paper that doesn’t have reporting both of both sexes and that doesn’t always happen. So we’re looking at ways to create a shift or change in how people think about these different issues that we’re facing and how we change them. So those are a couple of different ways that we’re creating change. And we’ve touched on the fact that obviously a lot of these disparities still persist and they’re still a big gap in knowledge. Like you said, we you know, the medical world still doesn’t fully understand why for example, you know, 80% of autoimmune cases tend to be women, but I would love to hear your perspective on whether you feel progress has been made, you know, even in the last decade or so, you know, you mentioned President Biden’s new announcement of his investment in women’s health research, but aside from that, you know, do you feel like there has been progress You have to we all have to agree that there’s been some progress. They’re just haven’t been enough again. Look at the percent of the population that we represent and then look at some of the disparities or discrepancies. That’s still exist. Look at how much money is allocated by NIH just studying women. So none of it adds up. Those things have to change. We can’t just sit back and say they’re okay. So no, I don’t I don’t think it’s changed enough at all. And I don’t think any person in this field and I’m not an economist. I’m not a physician but as a business person I can look at the data and I can look at the numbers and I look can look at the amount of money that are being allocated men wouldn’t tolerate this for a minute. So, you know, it wasn’t until 2016 that male that female mice were included. Really. Why don’t we just get rid of all the male mice and just use all female eyes. So, you know, none of this is acceptable. Let’s be very clear and it shouldn’t be acceptable there has to be greater equality and there has to be greater recognition that women’s bodies are different than males male bodies down to the cellular level. If we don’t understand that then we’re treating women as we treat men which is 175 pound white male most drugs are tested on a male not on the women that need to take them and that just doesn’t work. So in clinical trials, for example, is it not shocking that lesson 5% of the participants in clinical? Trials are black women. Is that what President Clinton mandated in 1993? I don’t think so. And you know looking forward to the rest of 2024 and moving ahead. What will some of your next efforts be focused on and sort of what are you hoping to achieve next? Well, I’m hoping to make some of the changes in some of the basic operating methods that we currently have or some of what has been acceptable which you know is kind of for me has a lot of bias in it. I think we’re not going to really create significant change until there’s greater awareness. So like you pointed out at the beginning of this conversation women need to know the data, they need to know the facts. They need to be armed when they go into a doctor’s office and that doctor prescribes a drug. They need to know to say has this drug been tested on women. Now, most of us don’t know to do that and most doctors will say, I don’t know. And women have to be able in my opinion or should ask can we find out because drugs are metabolized differently in men and women. That’s the first thing the second thing is women should not accept if they have an emergency. For example that no one can figure out and there are certain autoimmune issues that have taken up to seven years to diagnose. That’s not acceptable. Hi, my name is turning to say about an emergency. If you go to a an emergency room and you have shoulder pain, you don’t quite feel. Well. You kind of you’re tired. You’re lethargic. You could be having a heart attack, but many male Physicians are not trained to recognize what the symptoms are or female that for that matter of a female heart attack. So many women are sent home with an antidepressant and dropped out of a heart attack. That’s not acceptable. So part of this is understanding. What what are we dealing with? What is the landscape? What is the data that we’re dealing with? And I’ve just giving you some examples. So if you if I don’t have you understanding more of how these things affect you personally or that you’re all the women in your life. We’re not creating any change. But the more you learn the more, you know, the more you’re going to question the more you should become angry and say this is not right and it isn’t and so I think one of whams missions is great certainly greater awareness. Producing greater data that shows the disparities discrepancies how some diseases affect women exclusively are predominantly and what those what those differences look like so that we can be looking for how we can create greater understanding and more research around those discrepancies disparities so that we can improve the health of women. Yeah, you know I think almost every woman probably has an experience or a memory of going to the doctor and complaining of some sort of ailment or pain and being dismissed or that being dismissed as anxiety. For example, that’s the common story. I’ve heard from a lot of people and experienced myself, but I wasn’t even aware of this statistic about the clinical trial thing until recently. So it’s actually like you said the awareness is still low and that needs to be worked on for sure and the women of Distinction event is obviously coming up this week. And I wanted to ask you if you could go a little bit of a sneak peek of what you’ll be talking about in the keynote. Obviously without giving too much away. Well, there’s a lot of the data that I’ve given you now put obviously in even greater context and in greater detail, especially identifying how much money is allocated just studying some of these different diseases that affect women more than they affect men. That’s one part and then There’s the historical part of why did I as a businesswoman decide to do this, which is an interesting part of the dialogue because clearly, you know, there are a lot of different things that we can do with our lives. So that’s interesting I think and then the part to me that’ll be the most interesting to your audience is I believe there’s a huge opportunity through marketing and media to change the dialogue. Like I said earlier this for music Communications problem. We don’t know this data because no one’s really communicated it necessarily effectively to us. So the more effectively Wham and others can communicate the state and where is a 501 C3. So we’re very focused on helping other people spread this message and spread this data, which is happening. There’s a momentum right now. I don’t want to say but this certainly a significant amount of taking place where there is greater awareness. There is greater interest part of it has to do with the Biden Administration part of an S with this just more out there. And so yeah what we what we need, To do is figure out in my opinion to marketing and media how we can be more provocative dramatic embracing engaging with this data in order to get more men and women focused on the fact that you’ve got to change this. This is too big a percent of our population that if they’re healthy. It’s 100 trillion dollar Opportunity. By the way that has been recently identified by Mackenzie. There’s more and more data coming out that is showing why investing in women whether research or Enterprise is so valuable and Carolee you’ll be continuing this conversation at this week’s event. So if you’re interested in hearing more go to MMM women of Distinction for more info and tickets. These are obviously super important topics, and I’m really glad that you’ll be our keynote speaker at the event. I’m excited to hear your speech and to hear everyone’s sort of discuss this really important topic. So, thank you again. Carolee for joining us today. Thank you. I really look forward to seeing you there. It’ll be an exciting day for everyone there including the Of Health policy update with Lesha Boucher in the absence of Federal Regulation on AI states are taking matters into their own hands. Colorado recently signed a new law that would regulate AI including in healthcare. And California has made moves to push some 30 new regulatory measures forward that would create guard rails around the technology in May, Colorado. Governor Jared Polis signed SB to 05 which aims to strengthen protections for consumers around how businesses use AI in high stakes decisions. There are first to decisions that could impact a person’s education Opportunity Employment Healthcare Services housing or legal services. In healthcare at the law would regulate how developers address an algorithm’s bias based on genetic information or other data. Non-profit Consumer Reports applauded the move noting it was quote the first comprehensive AI bias law in the nation and that Colorado is the first state in the country to extend Baseline protections to its citizens when it comes to high-risk AI decision technology. California meanwhile has started to build upon its 2020 data Privacy Law by crafting dozens of new AI bills Rebecca Bauer Kahan chair of the California state assemblies privacy and consumer protection committee noted in a statement that quote as California has seen with privacy. The federal government isn’t going to act on AI. So we feel that it is critical that we step up and protect our own citizens. Other seats across the country have proposed some 400 new laws on AI this year according to the New York Times last year the Biden Administration unveiled an executive order that requires federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services to develop responsible AI standards in the coming years, but tangible Federal legislation hasn’t yet come to fruition. I’m LeSabre Shack senior reporter at mmm and is the part of the broadcast mowing welcome Jack O’Brien to tell us what’s training in healthcare this week. Hey Jack. Hey there mark before we hop into what’s trending in healthcare. I want to go to the thing that’s trending probably most in our world, which is the agency 100. We previewed it last week and it is up in live on our website all 100 profiles all the agencies to watch the best jerseys. You name it? We’ve got all the content on the website. And so I certainly encourage if you haven’t already to check it out. I want to commend both Mark and Lesha for their hard work and certainly our podcast producers who needs no other Their introduction and accolades but he does because he worked hard and all the podcast out. It’s just good to kind of see this thing actually take off and be real and I know that it’s a big sigh of relief for all of us to be able to move that off our plate. So certainly encourage our audience to go and check out the agency 100 stuff and see all our hard work there and you were just a big of a contributor as the rest of us Jack so kudos to you as well. And yeah everybody check it out think you’ll enjoy it. So I wanted to go to our first story this week, which is about the Tribeca Film Festival. If you’re in New York like we are the annual Film Festival is taking place downtown in Manhattan and there’s always a healthcare angle last year. I went to the film festival in Novartis had a documentary on a skin condition HS that was detailing how it affects patients and caregivers and all his stuff this year. There are films that have a healthcare angle and different activations. The biggest one is group therapy, which is produced by comedian Kevin Hart and it takes us kind of unique look through a documentary lens of group therapy involving a number of different famous people some of them Fluid comedian Tig Notaro Neil Patrick Harris comedian Mike Birbiglia, London Hughes Gary gulman and atsuko at kasuka. In addition to that. There’s also Whoopi Goldberg’s curated animated short programs. One of them is in the shadow of the Cyprus, which is Iranian film that details mental health challenges and then not necessarily a film Premiere but one that’s coming from the world of audible in terms of podcast series is backfired The Vaping Wars which details the rise and fall of Jewel which I think has some even greater timeliness given the fda’s decision last week. So I wanted to talk about it here obviously haven’t had a chance to have been out of town actually recently, but haven’t had a chance to go and see any of these things but it is nice to see Tribeca Film Festival as one of the more well-known film festivals really taking some time and having some slots available to talk about health care special for the mental health perspective, too. It’s obviously so important. It’s definitely a sign that you know, the mental health conversation that really opened up during the pandemic has become quite mainstream, you know with group therapy. That one really stands out to me. I haven’t seen it yet either but I did watch the trailer briefly and it is definitely stood out to me that you know, you have all these mainstream comedians who are in this like group therapy session talking about their mental health problems throughout their life and they’re being so open about it. And you know, that’s it just evidence that the stigma around these conversations have really broken down a lot more in recent years in my opinion and then The Vaping Wars won as you mentioned. It is quite relevant right now because the FDA did reverse its ban on Jules so that kind of leaves the e-cigarette and vaping Market kind of in limbo, I guess even though a lot of Public Health experts. I was reading were basically announcing fd’s decision to do that and saying that they shouldn’t have done that. But curious to hear your thoughts on this Mark. Thanks, too. I applaud them, you know. It’s great to see a lot of health issues getting the film treatment, you know, I love the community approach to mental health because stand up is for some as Neil Patrick Harris notes and one of the teasers fraught with insecurities, you know, it’s just you and the mic on stage facing the audience and if they like your bits or not and a lot of them are baring their souls and their ex, you know, Chris Rock said he was picked on a lot of the kid that became part of his act and you know Carvey in Spade didn’t have the greatest, you know, family life when they were growing up and all this kind of wins its way into their comedy and there’s a lot there’s sort of a lot of insecurities behind their comedy and then maybe that’s why it’s sort of hits us, you know in different ways. But and this case the comedy seems like a giant Icebreaker to talk about serious issues and I like how they talk about themselves as mentally ill committee and comedians, you know, somebody that we all have issues, you know, we’ve been in therapy or whatnot worked out stuff and this is just one more step forward, you know for getting this reasoning awareness of mental health issues and Look forward to the vaping flick as well. That sounds sounds really interesting. You know, you look around and all these products, you know that are so called marketed for you know, as smoking alternatives are becoming things that are youth are hooked on in and of themselves and I’m not sure it’s a good thing, you know. So how did that all come to be? You know, so this seems to tell the story behind that so that looks like a good one as well. Yeah, if I can tack on two final thoughts here, I go back to the mental health aspect of it. I do think that there is a lot of value in having people as well known as Kevin Hart and Whoopi Goldberg supporting these projects. I think it’s from the African American Community where it’s this idea of breaking down the stigmas around receiving therapy or getting help for any sort of mental issues might be going through and breaking down that whole idea Mark you talked about the idea of being a mentally ill comedian. I think for so long there was kind of this romance cessation of like, oh you think if you’re Bill Hicks or your Andy Kaufman’s or Lenny Bruce and these comedians where it’s like, oh they dealt with all these mental issues, but that’s what made them so great and it’s like well, it’s actually kind of a hindrance too. It wasn’t something that just because they were Mentally ill they were these great comedians like they’re a bunch of great comedians today, but they still are able to say I’m great in spite of my mental illness not because of it too. And I think that’s a very important way of reframing the conversation there. So I think it’s very important to do that. And and the point is well taken on The Vaping War stuff. I have no idea where it goes here. If I can only just give a little plug. I reviewed the Netflix documentary series that they had last year about Jewel and all that. You can find that on the website. We’ll link it in the description of the podcast here, but certainly it’s it’s just another development in terms of where we go in this this Saga towards smokeless nicotine and how it affects the youth. Yeah, like the bill hooks reference not that many people know about it. He was one of the one of the best one of the greatest if anybody in our audience likes Dennis Leary, they can go watch Bill Hicks because that was his entire act and speaking of reframing, you know disabilities that leads us into our next item. Yeah. So we’ve got now only Hollywood in the first part of it by way of the Tribeca Film Festival. We also have Big Gyllenhaal who gave a recent Prof. He had a recent profile in The Hollywood Reporter where he talked about being legally blind, which is something that I did not know. I’ve been enjoying his movies for years and you know, he was just on SNL he’s on the finale of SNL this season and he has 2012 50 Vision, which I don’t know a ton about eyesight but seeing those numbers together is not something usually see and he had told The Hollywood Reporter that he you know, the glasses that he wears are not for some sort of like show or is that static purpose? He literally can’t see he said quote. I like to think it’s advantageous. He says, I’ve never known anything else when I can’t see in the morning before I put on my glasses. It’s a place where I can be myself. He said that he’s used his blindness to help miss an actor. He talked about a scene in the movie Southpaw which came out about a decade ago where his character supposed to be talking to the police and he removed his contact. So he was able to listen more closely and be enveloped in that scene unless I want to bring you in here because I think we always have highlighted. In this segment of the podcast like oh so celebrities who they have ex condition. And I think there’s a little bit of shame or a little bit of like It kind of being caught in their condition. They got diagnosed with this. They had something happen. He’s really kind of leaning in saying like, yeah, it’s part of me. But you know, there are plenty of other people that are legally blind. It doesn’t stop me from living a fulfilling life and doesn’t stop other people either. Definitely. Yeah. I think it’s really cool that he kind of flips the idea that a disability can be a hindrance and instead of saying hey, it’s actually advantageous in these ways. He really brings kind of this unique and New Perspective to it, which I think you know can resonate with Healthcare marketers who are often, you know, looking to partner with celebrities or partner with influencers who have certain health conditions, you know, instead of them talking about how it’s a it’s you know, a barrier or an obstacle in their lives. Jillian Hall is basically saying these are the unique things I get to experience that actually helped my acting career or I get to be, you know, I get to feel a sense of peace and being by myself when I don’t put my glasses on so I think it’s really cool that he is kind of highlighting this and bringing that up and like I said I think there’s there’s a lot of takeaways for healthcare marketers and that as well. Yeah, definitely taking the positive aspect of a condition rather than focusing on the negative side effects Mark. Where are your thoughts on this? Absolutely agree with Lesha. I think some I Brands will be reaching out to The Jig Jillian Hall team soon. If they haven’t already, you know, there’s this notion that what many of us see as a disability can actually be at advantageous, you know, when people are living with it and there’s all sorts of diversity, you know, like they call a neurodiversity these days and so we have to open open our eyes and open intended to that and as an influencer, you know Brands could do a lot worse. So one thing I do hope that this does not lead to as a new trend on tiktok, you know, we’re like, oh, let me try and see, you know, let me take my eyes shut or something and see if that actually heightens my my hearing abilities at all. And I think that leads into our third segment here, which we were joking a little bit about a offline. There was a study that came out last week at The Sleep 2024 annual meeting the found most of the Sleep tips that are shared on tiktok are supported by empirical evidence. I want to bring leche in here because we’ve talked through. Countless tiktok Trends and most of them are like don’t do this or do this. If you’re very careful or under certain circumstances. We’ve even talked about sleeping ones before the the mouth taping one is the first one that comes to mind where people were literally taping their mouths shut so they would be able to sleep better not better. Yeah, and it’s it’s I’m not sure that this is the one that they’re necessarily referring to in the study, but it did get a lot of people talking like, oh, yeah, like not everything. I guess that’s on social media is completely wrong. You know, it is interesting to see that headline like most sleep tips shared on tiktok are supported by scientific evidence because it’s usually not the case with you know, tiktok tips and Trends and hacks. I’m sure that I mean, I guess this may be a good sign that there are like, you know, there’s an accumulation of more medically Sound Advice happening on tiktok now like we’ve talked about before I think there’s more doctor influencers now than there were ever before on tiktok who are sharing medically sound advice on things like sleep, but there’s still a lot of weird sleeping trends like you mentioned the mouth taping one. There’s bad rotting where people just stay in bed all day that we covered and that has been said by experts that it does not help your sleep at all. Or your mental health for that, right? And there’s another one called Hercule darkling which is like a form of bed rotting but a shorter leg version of it where you basically stay in bed for a little while after waking up and then get up for the day and then I guess some tiktokers are also live streaming their sleep. So like help others with insomnia. So there’s like a lot of other things are so really questionable that are out there. So I you know, I’m not sure if I totally trust the the study headline, but I’m sure there are some influencers who are who are putting out medically sounds stuff. It’s a cracking up her. What was that? I don’t know why that’s got me. I can’t wait to see I can’t wait to see how the transcription service is able to make that make sense Mark. I want to bring you into our conversation here for one your thoughts and Herkel going but also the hashtags that were used though were part of the study. They looked at hashtag sleep hacks. Hashtag sleep hygiene, hashtag sleep tips and Collected almost 300 sleep tips across about 60 videos and it’s really interesting to see them kind of like, you know taking a real scientific approach this thing that we’ve talked a lot about on the podcast but like these researchers are really trying to find is there any value in these tips and to some degree they did? Yeah, looks like they looked at about 58 videos and the group them into these seven themes calming activities use of electronics environment food substances to avoid before bed food substances, that would promote sleep schedule and other sleep-related behaviors, which is where the aforementioned mouth taping Falls in so, you know, but basically their conclusion, I believe, you know, there’s just an abstract posted. They don’t want the full study up but the conclusion is that anything kind of giving information about sleep hygiene and sleep environment is generally backed by scientific support. The witch kind of makes sense, right the other stuff, you know, especially, you know Foods or substances that promote sleep like magnesium, you know, probably the jury’s still out. I’m not sure if the NIH is, you know commissioned to study on that obviously, you know, you want to avoid caffeine before bed. Not a lot of controversy there. So there’s probably you know, a common sense kind of thing, you know, in terms of the Sleep mouth taping, you know, anything, you know, that that sort of sounds jarring, you know to us from a common sense perspective and the same thing with like bone smashing and teeth grinding which were believe it or not some other trends that Lesha found on tiktok last year probably best to avoid and I do just want to give one final thing before we wrap up here. I don’t know much in terms of like how they titled their abstracts and everything but this one just maybe laugh because the title of the study is tiktok made me do it and Analysis of these scientific evidence supporting tiktoks recommendations for better sleep and I feel like that’s always the third thing that we talked about in this segment is just Tick Tock made me do it. It’s like is it a good idea or a bad idea mostly time not but you know a broken clock is right once a day so we can we can give it to them. What’s going up on the podcast next week Mark? Yeah, so next week we’re going to have our man and Ken Stephen Madden who’s going to be giving a brief dispatch from the ground on the cassette in terms of what’s going on from a medical marketing perspective. So we’ll have that dispatch next week from the 2024 can lions International Festival creativity. So you have that to look forward to and in the meantime. We hope you enjoy the a100 content package that went up in addition to everything else. Thanks, Jack and Lesha and thanks to everybody out there for joining us on this week’s episode of the mmm podcasts. We’ll see you next week. That’s it for this week. The mmm podcast is produced by Bill Fitzpatrick Gordon failure and Jack O’Brien. Our theme music is by cesium sohn rate review and follow every episode wherever you listen to podcasts new episodes out every week and be sure to check out our website. Mmm hyphen.com for the top news stories and farmer marketing.