Cancer screenings and employee wellness programs

When I read a recent healthtech headline, I stopped in my tracks.

ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, is partnering with a breast cancer screening platform.

At first glance, such a headline might have you imagining short, looping videos about mammograms and cancer screening.

But here’s what this story is actually about: Gabbi, the women’s health platform, is partnering with the ByteDance to bring breast cancer screening to all of their employees, regardless of screening age recommendations.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know cancer screening is an issue close to my heart. 

In a certain light, screening age recommendations for these important preventive health tools make sense.

• Providers and payers need clear, evidence-based instruction for when to have patients start screenings. 
• However, when younger patients wish to undergo these routine screenings, especially when they see cancer incidence in younger people increase, they may find themselves locked out. 
• This is especially the case with colorectal cancer and breast cancer, both of which have been increasing in populations younger than the respective screening age.

In medicine, it can take a while for official policies to catch up with the evidence. But patient lives are too precious to leave in the balance. That’s why I find this Gabbi-ByteDance partnership so exciting.

Employee health & wellness benefits aren’t a novelty. 

• More and more, we’re seeing these perks beyond regular insurance wielded as an ingenious preventive health workaround.
• By offering certain health benefits—from fertility benefits to all-inclusive cancer screening, corporate employers promote preventative health by allowing patients to forego the typical limitations that health insurers impose on who has access to what care.