Interview with Shalen De Silva, Founder, Vincere Health

Today I interviewed Shalen De Silva, a co-founder of Vincere Health. Shalen is a former banker who had previously founded a clinic to deliver free cataract and cleft surgeries and primary eye and dental care around remote parts of Asia. From that he decided to dedicate his career to health care. Founded by Shalen and Jake Keteyian during their time at Harvard School of Public Health, Vincere Health describes itself as the World’s First Digital Clinic for Addiction.  Vincere Health focuses on helping people with smoking cessation and rewards participants as they work through the program. After, individuals sign up they receive a Quit Kit, the web app, and a personal coach. As people go through the program they receive a monetary reward on their progress as the smart tech tracks results. Reducing smoking has many resulting health benefits. For example, smoking cessation has been found to provide a 7x return on birth weight and newborn intensive care units. Vincere Health is working to provide access to many populations that have a lack of health access or lower income. Specifically, about 80% of the people Vincere Health works with are on Medicaid. This is helpful as they are providing key access to mental health care in low income and rural communities. From the programs they offer and the psychiatric nurse practitioners, they are bringing an adequate health program and additional access to these communities. Vincere Health is an effective model on how to increase buy in towards a healthier life and offers a framework as well as how to expand health access to more communities.