Everyone Has the Right to Their Health

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in health and wellness but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Yi-an Yang, Founder and CEO of Amah Health, located in Chicago, IL, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Amah Health provides tech-enabled communication training products to primary care health professionals to learn evidence-based behavior science to influence patients' health behaviors in chronic conditions management.

Tell us about yourself

Effective patient communication is an important clinical skill that contributes to increased patient and health professional satisfaction and improves patient adherence and outcomes. However, medical education currently offers limited opportunities to expose learners to communication science. As a result, clinicians identify themselves more as "providers of health" than as "communicators about health." This is concerning, especially when 6 in 10 US adults have a chronic disease. Behavior change is critical for chronic care management. My company name is Amah Health, and "Amah" means "grandma" in Taiwanese. What inspired me was my experience as a former medical interpreter for patients with less English proficiency and as a contractor at health symposiums at the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute of Health. With these experiences, I have front-line insights and a 30,000-foot view of intercultural health communication. Driven by my passion for social impact, I applied my knowledge and skills from Northwestern University's Master's degree in Health Communication, conducted research, and founded my company that combines the collective wisdom of communication scientists, clinicians, e-learning architects, and health administrators for sustainable changes in the healthcare space.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Our pilot study at CommunityHealth, the largest free clinic in the US that provides healthcare to vulnerable minorities who are uninsured, showed that beneficient persuasion science could be broken down into actionable steps to train health professionals and that technology can be used to scale such training. Our pilot study results were published at the recent American Medical Association's (AMA) Health Systems Science summit. Before this, we were awarded a health equity innovation award hosted by BCBSIL. Additionally, we were accepted by MATTER, a healthcare startup incubator, to be a cohort member of a health equity accelerator sponsored by YWCA.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Sometimes I got too absorbed in the business and forgot to slow down and smell the roses. After all, entrepreneurship is a journey, not a sprint. I recently started to practice meditation, and it does help me feel calmer - which in turn rewards me with more clarity in business.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

Have a deep understanding of your know-how (technology/product/service), the product's ecosystem, and yourself (your strengths and weaknesses).

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.amahhealth.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yianyang/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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