Valera Health, New York, NY
I started my career at Williams College as a tentative pre-med student; I knew medicine was a career interest of mine, but I wasn’t sure enough to be certain I would stay on the pre-med track. In order to confirm that interest I spent most of my summers and breaks interning in medical-related fields; I worked as an EMT on ambulances in Haifa, Israel, I shadowed doctors at a clinic in Chinatown, New York, and I volunteered at a therapeutic horseback riding center in Cordoba, Argentina.
Through these internship experiences I learned I had the skills and interests to pursue a career in medicine, but I also became aware of broader, systemic issues in the public health system. At the same time, I became interested in other healthcare fields through which I could potentially address the systemic issues I witness while working in medical care. Additionally, my academic career at Williams exploring various interests ranging from art history to computer science gave me the desire to find more interdisciplinary careers through which I could integrate my skills and passions. Interning at Valera Health through the ASIP program this past summer has enabled me to explore one such career path.
Valera Health is a New York-based behavioral health care management start-up based in New York. The start-up was founded in 2015 by three doctors in response to the gaps they saw in the treatment of patients with mental health issues within the primary care system. Valera’s initial focus has been the significant population of patients who have comorbid physical and behavioral health problems. These patients tend to be “high users” of health care, consuming a disproportionate amount of medical care compared to the rest of the population. They do not usually take their medications or come in for appointments and tend to be homeless, malnourished, or suffer from drug addictions. Consequently, many end up in hospitals for expensive emergency care, rather than addressing their needs at the primary care level.
To address this problem, the founders of Valera Health used digital technology to harness the care management system, a part of primary care that relies on care managers to follow up with patients. Care managers typically focus on complex patient populations and ensure their patients take their medications, go to their doctors’ appointments, and get the services they need. However, care managers tend to spend a lot of their time tracking down their patients in person or over the phone.
Thus, Valera has streamlined this process by providing care managers with a digital platform through which they can communicate with patients. Valera’s technology enables care managers to securely message or video chat with their patients and send standardized health assessment questionnaires and educational material. Patients can also opt-in to passive data tracking, which allows care managers to track steps and whether they have spent an extended period of time in a certain location. For example, a care manager will be notified if a patient has not left their home for more than three days. Through enhancing the care management system, Valera has succeeded to increase care managers’ caseloads and better patient outcomes.
As Valera has already established their platform, my role as an intern at Valera has largely been to help the company take its next steps in progressing as a start-up. For me, doing so has meant getting to understand the various facets of start-up life by working closely with many Valera staff members, including project managers, program managers, the business development director, and the CEO.
My first days at the start-up were a whirlwind of meeting everyone in the office and educating myself on Valera’s platform and relevant behavioral health issues. All my coworkers were incredibly welcoming and were more than happy to help me with any questions I had. They also truly valued my input and did not treat me as an unknowledgeable college intern. Additionally, I thoroughly enjoyed the collaborative, upbeat character of the start-up environment. Working with a small group of people in a shared space effectively facilitated true collaboration among the Valera team.
The power of interdisciplinary collaboration especially came together for me during my first project at Valera to develop a self-directed cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) app to help users better manage their mood, stress, and anxiety. The therapist leading the project brought her background in psychology to incorporate the CBT-based curriculum into the app. The product manager contributed his experience in technology to refine the app’s interface in order to make it as intuitive and interactive as possible. Meanwhile, I used my research skills and psychology background to explore published data on using “gamification” to make health and educational apps more engaging and effective. I also helped recruit participants and design a questionnaire for a focus group study with potential users. Additionally, my coworkers and I came from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds as Arab, Chinese, and Jewish Americans, which allowed us to incorporate cultural competency into the development of the app. I will be leaving Valera before the first stage of app development is completed, but I was able to learn a lot from my participation and make real contributions to the design of the app.
Besides working on the CBT application, I also became well versed in the Medicaid and Medicare system by helping the director of business development to find and reach out to potential clients. Valera fits well with the recent policy shift of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS) towards value-based care. Beginning with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, CMS has begun transitioning its healthcare reimbursement system from a fee-for-service model (based on the cost of the services provided to the patient) to a value-based model (based on the outcomes providers achieve for their patients). Many of the value-based patient outcome measures in the new system relate to behavioral health, the current focus of Valera’s platform. Thus, much of my business development work has focused on finding organizations that are adopting the value-based system and that would benefit from Valera’s ability to streamline care while improving patients’ behavioral and physical health.
My other duties at Valera have consisted of helping create a future business model based on insurance companies’ reimbursement policies, translating educational material into Spanish, writing and proofreading project proposals for potential clients, and reporting on new developments in the healthcare system. I have also worked to expand Valera’s publicity by writing articles related to the healthcare, behavioral health, and technology fields. After I submitted a draft of my first article, which discussed the interaction between diabetes and loneliness, my boss even offered me a part-time job during the school year as a content and publicity writer for the company. I am extremely excited about the opportunity as science writing is another special interest of mine!
Thus, my internship at Valera has confirmed my interest and ability to work in the healthcare outside of medical care. It has also sparked my interest in the innovative start-up field. Ultimately, medical school is still on the table for me, but my experience at Valera has confirmed that I would like to get more working experience after graduating from Williams next year before deciding whether or not to pursue a medical career. I am extremely grateful to the ASIP McCalpin Internship and Thomsen 1979 Fund for Entrepreneurship at Williams for giving me the financial support to have this incredible experience at Valera Health.
Megamenu Social