New survey establishes a data-driven baseline for diversity in digital health

In the November 9, 2020 Stat News article “New survey establishes a data-driven baseline for diversity in digital health,” Ivor Horn breaks down why representation matters and how the lack of diversity in digital health leadership furthers the likelihood of creating solutions that worsen already existing health disparities.

In early 2020, Horn partnered with Rock Health on a Diversity in Digital Health initiative to measure the baseline state of racial and ethnic diversity among U.S. digital health startup leadership teams. Between July and September 2020, they surveyed more than 650 founders and leaders. This was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has tragically highlighted the health disparities experienced by communities of color, and the Black Lives Matter social justice movement, which has shone a spotlight on the systemic racism causing these disparities.

Though the results of the survey were as expected in some areas, they indicated opportunities to improve across the board.

The survey showed significant differences in how digital health founders across different races, ethnicities, and genders funded their companies:

• More than half of white and Asian founders were backed by venture capital, compared to 24% of Black founders.

• Black founders were more likely to have bootstrapped their companies than their white and Asian counterparts.

• Black founders were more likely to be from the South (38%) and Midwest (20%) than from the West (4%) and Northeast (9%), the two regions in which the Rock Health Digital Health Funding Database shows capital concentration. For example, the average digital health deal size (from January through September 2020) was $36 million in the West versus $20 million in the South. This suggests Western founders are accessing more capital than their counterparts in the South, where there is much greater Black representation.

The survey also revealed a lack of people of color among leadership teams. Compared to their representation among the U.S. population, Asians were overrepresented in digital health (20% of survey respondents compared to 6% of the population), while Black leaders (8% of respondents compared to 13%) and Hispanic leaders (6% of respondents compared to 19%) were underrepresented.

There was also greater non-white diversity among company founders than among other leadership roles, with less Asian, Black, and Middle Eastern representation among non-founder leaders.

Digital health entrepreneurs surveyed reported different challenges and experiences. Black leaders reported more difficulty accessing capital than their white or Asian counterparts. And 83% of Black respondents indicated that inclusion in the digital health industry has stayed the same or worsened since they started working — compared to less than half of white respondents saying that.

You can read the full article here.