Investor darlings, behavioral health companies raised a whopping $5.1 billion in 2021. But the bulk of interventions focused on patients with mild to moderate mental health conditions.
Former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Mental Health Director Dr. Thomas Insel’s new venture, Vanna, is looking to change that paradigm. The for-profit startup connects people with serious mental illness (SMI) to resources in their community.
“I’m delighted that we’ve got all this new investment,” Insel told Behavioral Health Business. “And I think it’s really great to have so many smart entrepreneurs working on mental health projects, but I’m a little frustrated there hasn’t been more for people with [serious mental illness].”
SMIs impact roughly 5.6% of Americans, according to the NIH. SMIs, which include schizophrenia, psychotic disorders, bipolar disorders, major depressive disorder and others, result in serious functional impairment.
The economic cost of serious mental illness in the United States is estimated to be $317.6 billion each year, according to SMI Advisor.
The former NHI leader joined the company after serial entrepreneur and Vanna CEO Dr. Giovanni Colella approached him after a talk for Insel’s book, “Healing: Our Path From Mental Illness to Mental Health.”
Colella said he shared many of the same visions for serious mental illness care that Insel discussed in his book.
“What he began to realize very early on was that we actually knew what to do, we just aren’t doing it,” Insel said. “Or we’re doing it in bits and pieces, but nobody connects the dots, nobody actually brings it all together to create a kind of integrated solution for people with serious mental illness.”
Founded in 2021, San Francisco-based Vanna plans to help folks with SMIs tap into the community ecosystem. Specifically, the organization is looking to promote “collaboration between behavioral health providers, primary care providers, hospitals, payers, clubhouse and other community-based organizations.”
“I talked a lot about what I call the three Ps: providing people, place and purpose for those with serious mental illness,” Insel said. “And that if we did that well, and we did it comprehensively, continuously, compassionately, we could really help a lot of people who today end up incarcerated or homeless or just really struggling. We can help them to have a much better life to help them to thrive.”
The company’s model
While nonprofit organizations have traditionally had a major role in caring for people with SMIs, Vanna is looking to care for this population with a for-profit model.
“We’re quite convinced that there’s a business case to be made, because these are the most expensive patients in many health plans, including in Medicaid,” Insel said. “And we’ve seen this in the markets that we’ve looked at – these are very expensive patients. But importantly, the expense is not on the behavioral health side; it’s on the medical side.”
Insel noted that the industry is yet to demonstrate to payers and providers that comprehensive continuous behavioral health support through assertive community treatment (ACT) teams and psychologic community recovery clubhouses, as well as preventive medical care, will drive down overall costs.
“Our argument, or thesis is that by doing that, you will bring down the overall cost of care,” Insel explained.
Vanna’s care model will vary from market to market. For example, in some markets, the company will bring ACT teams together and will hire community health workers and peers. It will also help train the teams to get them off the ground.
However, in other markets those teams already exist.
Other times, Vanna will help connect organizations to help unify the patient journey and data.
“You don’t parachute in and try to fix this problem, because you won’t, unless you work from the ground up with local talent,” Insel said. “When we’ve done that in some markets, they actually have the ACT teams, but they may not have a clubhouse, or they may have both, but they’re not connected.”
In the future, Vanna is also looking to bring peer support to its members living with SMIs.
“The hope is that the people who will be doing a lot of the engagement for this population are going to be people who have been in this population … with lived experience,” Insel said. “I don’t mean that simply in the sense that they have a diagnosis – that could be part of it. But they have the lived experience of being from the same culture, speaking the same language, understanding what somebody’s going through.”
While there will be a technology aspect to Vanna Health, Insel said that at its core, the startup is a care company and not a tech company. He sees technology as more of a tool, and noted that the company is both “high-tech and high-touch.”
Vanna has roughly $4 million in seed funding. However, the company is not seeking out new funding – at least for the time being.
What’s next for Vanna Health?
“We’re not wanting to take investment right now – [not] until we really define much more clearly where we’ll be working and that population,” Insel said. “And we get the first real first data points to demonstrate what Vanna care really looks like.”
Indeed, Vanna Health is still in the early stages. Insel said that the company is in conversations with commercial and Medicaid payers about its services, with the goal of working with both down the road.
It is also building out its product and design team, as well as clinical services.
The next phase is talking to partners and choosing pilot programs.
“We’re in deep conversations about partnerships for pilots, in multiple states, and we’re going to have to decide which of those are really going to go forward,” Insel said. “I want that conversation to come to some closure really in July or August, so we can begin to launch.”
The next six months will be focused on those pilots and getting the initial data on the service.
“At the end of the day, you know, what we care about is making sure that more people with serious mental illness are thriving, and they’re taking care of their families, they’re back at work. They’re not disabled, they’re really able to fully recover,” Insel said. “And if we can create the kind of public-private partnership to make that happen by working with [Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics], … that’s fantastic.”
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