Daniela Luzi Tudor
Daniela Luzi Tudor
Co-founder & CEO @ WEconnect Health Management
“We’re countering this old business thought that whoever’s loudest, strongest, and most forceful is going to make things happen. That’s just not the truth.”
Action Prompts
// SELF REFLECTION
Daniela shared how her team is supported in choosing what they consider as part of their wellness -- whether that’s therapy, time to take care of their family or engage in activism work.
1. How has your definition of wellness at work changed this year?
2. What requests could you make to feel better supported?
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// TEAM EXPLORATION
The collective trauma we’re experiencing in 2020 is activating personal trauma related to family, health, and financial stability. We must assume everyone is experiencing different waves of emotions.
At the start of your next team meeting, use this simple check-in activity to invite your teammates to share their feelings (out loud or in the chat box) using weather metaphors:
Pick one or a combo:
- Sunny: Happy/excited
- Snowy: Relaxed/peaceful
- Rainbow: Hopeful
- Rainy: Sad/lonely
- Storm: Angry/frustrated
- Windy: Anxious/stressed
- Foggy: Confused/depressed
- Cloudy: Grumpy/sick
Psychological safety is the # 1 characteristic of high performing teams. Being seen in our truth establishes a welcoming environment, and removes barriers to authentic participation.
Like the sky, we’re always experiencing different weather patterns or emotions. Feel them, acknowledge them, and they too shall pass.
Resources
In her TED talk, Daniela addresses practical ways to build intimacy in the workplace – to create healthy, supportive and productive environments.
In this TED talk, learn how trauma or ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) increase risk for chronic diseases.
If you want to use the ACEs framework to improve your health, calculate your ACE score to start a conversation with your healthcare provider.
Daniela Luzi Tudor is the co-founder and CEO of celebrated Seattle startup WEconnect Health Management, focused on decreasing costs for addiction recovery across the United States. The WEconnect app is the first of its kind in the digital healthcare space, using proprietary technology to alert clinical teams of a member’s risk for relapse before it happens.
Daniela was inspired to create WEconnect based on her personal journey in long-term recovery from addiction, and her realization of the lack of patient aftercare resources.
Their team doubled this year to meet an increase in demand. Unfortunately, drug overdoses are spiking during the coronavirus pandemic, rising by roughly 18%. (NPR)
Daniela emphasizes that people in recovery from substance use disorder come from all walks of life, and that’s mirrored in the organization’s diverse hiring. The WEconnect team is especially attuned to the impact of trauma in all interactions, and this makes them more honest and stronger overall.
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Perspective On Facing Addiction In A Relentless Year
With the onset of COVID-19, what we saw for the populations that we serve, which are people in long term recovery from substance use disorder, is that for those that are in recovery, the risk of relapse, or reoccurrence increased tremendously. All of a sudden, with lockdown, people are not able to go in person to their support room meetings, or have that social connection, which is very fundamental to maintaining long term recovery.
Also, with the loss of jobs, people have less capital to put towards things like therapy, or any other medical services that keep them on a good track of mental, emotional and physical health. So those two things are major risks to someone who is currently in recovery.
We've done some things at WEconnect to mitigate those risks. But the truth of the matter is, for those that were either on the tipping scale of heavy use, and maybe hadn't quite tipped over into full blown substance use disorder, or folks that maybe were just slightly at risk, with isolation, with loss of job, with insecurity, it's actually pushed even more people into that category of experiencing substance use disorder. With the lack of economic support, there's even less access to help, even if somebody is in a place to reach out for it. So that's a thread that I see that has changed greatly this year.
Harmonizing The Team For Health & Wellness
For my team to feel engaged and purposeful at work in 2020, they need financial security and they need social connection. Also people need to know that your work and life are intertwined 100%. So instead of calling it work/ life balance, I like to call it work/life harmony.
In order to meet those three needs of social connection, economic security and helping them with work/life harmony, we sent out a survey and just asked people, “what is it that you need?”
On a micro level, we needed to make sure that they have a good setup at home, so we instituted a wellness benefit that they can use for things like therapy or office supplies. We gave them the choice of what they consider as part of their wellness.
We’re always encouraging people. We understand that their job at WEconnect is intertwined with their personal life. So if they want support to go out and protest, if they want support to go work the polls, we’ll let them do that.
We actually doubled in size since the beginning of COVID, so we've started taking a really hard look at our practices, and instituted a formal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee to ensure that we uphold the things that we say that we're passionate about. We also created a social impact club, where we read books, and get into action about issues that are important to them.
I kept repeating at every company meeting, saying, look, “I know despite that you have a paycheck, and despite that you are able to work from a comfortable home, the mental effects of what's happening with COVID-19 and the political unrest that's that's coming to the surface is psychologically very daunting. So let's make sure that we recognize that.” Just giving people the space to recognize that, and sit with it, and feel okay to talk about it, goes a much longer way than most people would think.
Insurance Companies Investing In Long Term Health
We pivoted from only serving a certain channel to partnering and getting paid by health insurance companies. The economic value to the system is that the cost is less when they invest into something preventative like WEconnect.
It took me a while to figure that out. At first I was like, we're saving lives, this is good enough. But actually, you have to take the clinical outcomes, and then transform them into economic value to show them.
I keep my team and our mission focused on serving the members. Myself and the executive team are that middle ground. We’ll continue to get this in the hands of patients for free, as long as we do our job and translate that to what this other side cares about.
Delivering Data That Guarantees Returns
When we got claims data back from the pilot that we did with one of the health insurance companies, it showed that our platform increased medically assisted treatment refills within 90 days by 35%. It increased appropriate use of primary care physician offices by 70 something percent, and we reduced emergency room stays readmitted by 14%.
So the person is getting the help that they need, with the things that they need that keeps them in constant recovery. Like regular doctor visits to manage their comorbidities, getting their medication refills for their medically assisted treatment like buprenorphine, and avoiding the emergency room. Because they're no longer going there, that means that they're getting healthier. Emergency rooms cost much more than those other two things. Showing that difference is how you make the case for return on investment.
The Urgency Of Success To Save Lives
I'm the founder, so I think, “This is helping people, this is showing value, let's do it.” But it still takes an enormously long time. There's compliance, and legal approvals, and complex priorities of different initiatives. The sales cycle of something like this is tremendously long.
What I actually think about is, every day we're not doing this, and we're not releasing this to another health insurance company to get in the hands of a person, another person has overdosed. It’s slower than I would like, but it does feel good to be amongst the first in this particular niche field, to show how digital therapeutics are really making an impact.
We get stories all the time about how our system is helping, and how people are able to buy their kids gifts for the first time during the holidays, or they're able to fix their car with the rewards they earn through our app by engaging in their care plan to go to their job interview. That's really inspiring. It’s frustrating how long it takes, but nothing great comes without great effort.
Future Vision, Powered By Data
The long term vision is becoming predictive and wholesome about wrapping around the person with everything it is that they need to thrive in recovery.
We can grow with machine learning to create a predictive model so we know when someone comes along that’s a certain age, location, geography and type of substance, we can offer a customized plan because we've seen thousands of other people like them, and are able to optimize for that.
We take in the data of care plan engagement, like what activities people are actually checking into? What's working for their personal recovery? There are so many different paths to recovery, from abstinence to medication assisted treatment, to only psychedelics, to support group meetings, religious ones, non religious ones. There’s a huge combination of types of recovery programs.
Taking in that data, then pairing that with what our peer coaches work on which is called Recovery Capital Planning, which takes into account helping them with housing, education, and shelter.
We can also use that data to influence policy and funding, how the systems are built and how providers integrate substance use disorder into them.
In our field, there's very little data, and studies are very small. They take years to publish. So being able to give a more comprehensive data set for this population is really important, and giving that free access so that policymakers and advocates can really make informed decisions.
Shaping A Business With Awareness Of The Whole Person
I'm very fortunate to have a board that is incredibly emotionally intelligent and business savvy in the way that business should be, which is that doing good and doing well are not mutually exclusive. If you give your team a sense of psychological safety, and they feel safe and coming to you with problems, they feel safe in being honest about who they are, then they will collectively work as hard as they can for your mission.
The big macro issue is trauma. So whether people think about it consciously or not, whatever their past experiences were, and the environments that they grew up in, their attachment style is what they bring into their work life. So if they're used to being avoidant, or if they're used to being anxious, you have to understand that root cause for them and counter that by making them feel safe, and allowing them to speak what it is that they're feeling and thinking, then hold them accountable to their goals so they get a sense of fulfillment.
It’s countering this old business thought that whoever's loudest, and strongest, and most forceful is going to make things happen. That's just not the truth. People have tons of choices to go into different fields in tech, which is obviously a very privileged space.
Being there and supporting people to feel safe is what I always encourage other leaders to focus on. Ultimately, that’s what makes everything work. That's what gives people a sense of ability to do what it is that they enjoy, and put passion into their work. The quality of the work is going to show.
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Use this collection of 28 self reflection prompts and team activities. Each one is designed to support you in exploring empathy, and building a work culture in alignment with your values and vision.