A man who sold his last company for $440 million just launched a new startup to fix rural healthcare

Hello,

Welcome to Insider Healthcare. I'm Lydia Ramsey Pflanzer, and today in healthcare news:

• Aspire founder Brad Smith has a new startup focused on rural healthcare;
• We rounded up the 9 most well-funded women's health startups;
• Mixing coronavirus vaccine doses might improve protection, early evidence is showing.

If you're new to this newsletter, sign up here. Comments, tips? Email me at [email protected] or tweet @lydiaramsey125. Let's get to it…

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We've made it to the end of June, and you know what that means: Today is your last day to submit nominations for our annual 30 under 40 list.

If this deadline snuck up on you – never fear. I'll leave the form open for an extra day, so you have until the end of the day on July 1. Get your nominations in ASAP!

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The man who built Aspire Health and sold it to health insurance giant Anthem for $440 million is launching a new venture to fix rural healthcare

• Brad Smith, the founder of Anthem's Aspire Health, has launched a startup to fix rural healthcare.
• The startup, Main Street Health, wants to help rural doctors get paid for keeping patients healthy.
• Main Street is launching with $26.6 million in funding from Oak HC/FT and Frist-Cressey Ventures.

Get the full story>>

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From birth-control delivery to online pregnancy care, here are the 9 highest-funded women's-health startups

• After Ro's Modern Fertility deal, women's-health companies are top of mind again in digital health.
• Using PitchBook and Crunchbase, Insider found the nine highest-funded women's-health startups.
• All fall into three broader categories: online prescriptions, fertility, and online and hybrid care.

Read the full list>>

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Early findings indicate that mixing and matching coronavirus vaccines might improve your protection

• Mixing Pfizer and AstraZeneca doses yields a greater immune response than two doses of AstraZeneca.
• That's according to early data from a UK study, though it hasn't been peer reviewed yet.
• One expert thinks it will be beneficial to get an mRNA booster after J&J's single-dose shot.

Find out more>>

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More stories we're reading:

• Moderna says its COVID-19 vaccine should work against the Delta variant (Insider)
• Walmart is selling a private label version of the insulin Novolog at $73 a vial (CNBC)
• Some experts who had Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine are now getting extra shots of Pfizer or Moderna to try to protect against the Delta variant (Insider)
• Inside the push to get Biogen's Alzheimer's drug approved (Stat News)
• Self-proclaimed 'workaholic' Fauci is seeing his daughters for the first time since the pandemic began (Insider)

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- Lydia