Get Active: MD, Co-Founder, Power Up Conference Speaker on Your Power and Bodily Autonomy
Sophia Yen, MD, is the co-founder of Pandia Health, and is on a mission to ensure access to reproductive healthcare for all women.
Sophia Yen, MD, is not wearing her uterus necklace today.
It is a mere oversight perhaps, because most days, the CEO and co-founder of Pandia Health, the world’s only women-founded, women-led, doctor founded, doctor-led birth control delivery company, dons the jewelry reminder as a way to “respect the womb. We all owe the womb for our existence.”
“@Teenmd makes it her life’s work to provide #healthcare to children and adolescents, and her mission to guarantee access to birth control, healthcare and #sexeducation information.”
Yen, a reproductive rights activist, founder of three non-profits, mother of two daughters, clinical associate professor at Stanford Medical School in pediatrics in the division of adolescent medicine and champion of female health, makes it her life’s work to provide healthcare to children and adolescents, and her mission to guarantee access to birth control, healthcare and sex education information.
Yen is presenting at Take The Lead’s 2022 PowerUp Conference: The Big RE: REthink, REwire, REcreate August 25-26 discussing the need to take action personally, publicly and politically in a cultural climate where the rights of women post-Roe are being eviscerated.
Explaining the name of her organization and its mission of birth control access nonstop, Yen says, “Pandia is the Greek goddess of healing and light. ‘Pan’ means every and ‘dia’ means day. So we got you covered every day.”
“@Teenmd is presenting at @Takeleadwomen ‘s 2022 #PowerUp Conference: The Big RE: REthink, REwire, REcreate August 25-26 discussing the need to take action in a cultural climate where the rights of women post-Roe are being eviscerated. #RoevWade”
Read more from Gloria Feldt on leadership post-Roe
Yen says she has had a future in medicine and healthcare in her sights since she was a child.
Born in Chicago where her mother was a nurse and her father a PhD student, her parents struggled financially, so when she was one year old, they brought Sophia to Taiwan to live with her aunt, her father’s sister. After one year when her father finished his post-doctoral work at University of California-Berkeley, she came back to the states, and has been living in California since.
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“Being Asian American, I was expected to be a doctor, a PhD, or a business person, but I liked people and I liked science. Since the fourth grade, I knew I wanted to be a doctor,” says Yen.
As a 15-year-old high school student, Yen says she volunteered at a Bay Area Planned Parenthood, where it was her job to run the pregnancy tests. She has never forgotten getting a positive test result for a 13-year-old who had come to the clinic for care.
Read more from Gloria Feldt on her years as CEO of Planned Parenthood
After the staff offered the patient counseling and options, the teen declared she would have the baby; Yen has not forgotten her.
“@Teenmd is the co-founder of @PandiaHealth, and is on a mission to ensure access to #reproductive #healthcare for all women. ”
“What are the odds that she would graduate?” Yen says she thought. “So it is my passion to prevent unplanned pregnancy at every age for anyone with a uterus,” Yen says.
See Sophia Yen’s TEDx Berkeley talk on reproductive health.
Yen continues that now through Pandia Health, that she co-founded in 2016, with the mission of “providing accessible and high-quality online women’s healthcare with a simple, personal, and convenient patient experience.” The in-house telemedicine group with expert doctors offers uninterrupted medication fulfillment, including birth control accessible 364 days a year.
“I think volunteering at Planned Parenthood as a sexually active teenager showed me the consequences of those who do not have comprehensive sex ed, or access to birth control,” she says.
““I think volunteering at @PPFA as a sexually active teenager showed me the consequences of those who do not have comprehensive sex ed, or access to birth control.”—@Teenmd, founder of @PandiaHealth. #sexeducation #healthcare”
Yen graduated with a degree in biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993, and went on to graduate from University of California-San Francisco Medical School in 1997. From there, she completed her adolescent medicine fellowship at UCSF in 2003, completing a Children’s Hospital Oakland pediatrics residency in 2004, and a Masters in Public Health from UC-Berkeley that same year.
Influenced by the teens she saw with unplanned pregnancies, Yen was eager to be the co-founder and board president of SheHeroes in 2008, a non-profit that “encourages young girls of all backgrounds to dream big.”
“If that teen had been given access to SheHeroes, she could say, ‘I want to be a doctor, a president, a CEO and she would have lived a different life.”
In 2010, Yen co-founded the Silver Ribbon Campaign To Trust Women, with the intention to bring “together progressive groups supporting reproductive health, rights and justice, and respect for women.”
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In 2014, Yen and two other co-founders came up with the idea for Pandia Health, that they launched two years later. Getting funding from venture capitalists at first was difficult, Yen says.
“Every male VC would ask, ‘How hard is it to get to the pharmacy every month?’” and misunderstand the mission. “Those without uteruses didn’t get it. But I would always sell the idea to the receptionist. Open-minded good men could get it,” Yen says.
Read more in Take The Lead on healthcare entrepreneurs
This prompted Yen to coin the term, “pill anxiety” or “the fear of running out of birth control and the stress of having to obtain birth control each month,” and she explained that to funders.
Over the past month, the need for the services of Pandia Health has grown more than 300% she says. Since the rollback of Roe V. Wade recently, which Yen calls, “a horrible devastation of rights,” and the understanding of the urgent need for birth control access, customers from more states are joining Pandia’s ranks.
“Over the past month, the need for the services of @PandiaHealth has grown more than 300% says CEO and founder @Teenmd, especially since the rollback of #RoevWade. #womenshealth”
Read more in Take The Lead on leading in a post-Roe workplace
There is an increase in funding and an increase overall in female healthcare entrepreneurs. According to Forbes, “While specific data is hard to find, anecdotal evidence seems to show more women are founding or leading efforts in the healthcare and life sciences industries. And even though women still lag men in the percentage of healthcare leadership roles, with only 13% serving as CEOs and 30% being part of C-suite teams, they tend to be better represented at the top versus in other sectors like financial services or technology.”
Forbes reports huge growth in “femtech, a subcategory of healthtech focuses on approaches and solutions for women’s health issues. At least $241 million in venture capital funding flowed to this sector in 2019 alone, with Frost & Sullivan projecting a market potential of $50 billion by 2025.”
The next mission Yen is serving is what she terms #PeriodsOptional, or finding specific medication that can control bleeding for women, and therefore help her regain control of her life by cutting down on pain, missed work, likelihood for cancers and more.
“The next mission @Teenmd is serving is what she terms #PeriodsOptional, or finding specific medication that can control bleeding for women, and therefore help her regain control of her life. #womenshealthcare”
“Incessant menstruation is a new phenomenon,” Yen says. “There is a way to turn off your period,” Yen says, reducing the environmental impact from 10,000 to 13,000 tampons or pads a woman uses in her lifetime.
Yen will highlight the importance of making choices and maintaining power and autonomy in her discussions at the Power Up Concert, The Big RE, August 25-26.
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Yen is also working on pharmacogenetics, the study of algorithms that match a person’s genetics to what birth control medication— or any medication— they may need.
Some medications work better for Asian or Black women, but not white women. “There are more than 2000 birth control prescriptions,” and very few people are aware of what will work best for them, Yen says.
Women and girls need to take action for themselves and their health, Yen says, particularly in a post-Roe world. In addition to women knowing about and accessing birth control, Yen advises it is best to “Get active and angry, not apathetic.” She adds, ‘Volunteer, organize, don’t lay down and die. It is about choice and bodily autonomy, my body, my future.”
“Women and girls need to take action for themselves and their health, @Teenmd says, particularly in a post-Roe world. Yen advises it is best to “Get active and angry, not apathetic.” #RoevWade #healthcare”
