MEETING AT THE UNITED NATIONS BRINGS TOGETHER A PANEL OF FEMALE LEADERS DISCUSSING WOMEN’S HEALTH, DATA PRIVACY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
 
 
The Human Trust and Dionysus Health hosted a special luncheon focused on "The Future Is Hers: Investing in Women's Health," ahead of the UN General Assembly taking place this week. The high-profile event brought passionate advocates in mental health, technology, and entrepreneurship to address critical issues affecting women's health worldwide.
Savannah Sellers, award-winning journalist and co-anchor of NBC News' Morning News NOW, conducted an interactive Q&A session with Dr. Andrea Cubitt and Dr. Vivienne Ming, the entrepreneurs behind Dionysus Digital Health and The Human Trust, and Maureen Fura, MPA of Mammha.
 
Jesse Draper, Founding Partner of Halogen Ventures, set the stage with information from Pitchbook that women-founded startups received 2% or less of venture capital (VC) funding in the U.S. and Europe in 2023. Yet, women represent 51% of the population and women-owned businesses generate $1.8 trillion per year. A study by Morgan Stanley found that women drive 83% of all U.S. consumption through both buying power and influence. Draper addressed how we can collectively move the needle at the intersection of women's entrepreneurial pursuits and mental health, emphasizing the importance of supporting women-led businesses.
 
Dr. Andrea Cubitt and Dr. Vivienne Ming presented their groundbreaking work around the development of the first predictive blood test to identify the risk of postpartum depression in the 3rd trimester and the use of the insights gained to develop more effective interventions to improve child and maternal health.
 
Dr. Vivienne Ming highlighted her work at The Human Trust to provide real safeguards on the storage and use of personal data to ensure AI can be safely used to benefit all populations regardless of background or socio-economic status. Dr Ming addressed the novel approaches Dionysus and The Human Trust were developing in order to make this technology accurate and safe for all women irrespective of where they live.
 
Why this work is important?

Everyone has a mother. But to be a mother is much more than just having babies. A mother is a source of love and empathy, a teacher and nurturer of her children. She is the single largest influence on a child's life. For each of us, whether we realize it or not, our earliest childhood interactions with our mother are arguably the most influential and critical experiences of our lives. Without a mother, there are no children. Without children, there is no future. 
 
Statistically, women are 3x more likely to experience mental illness, and twice as likely to suffer from depression as men. Mothers are indeed ground-zero for the emerging mental health crisis we are living through, but the need to address mental health in women is much more significant than the simple concept of a more effective antidepressant. It underpins the survival of humanity itself, because it also underpins the mental health of future generations. 
 
After decades of research, we are starting to finally understand how postpartum depression starts, what drives it, and how it can be most effectively treated. We are even able to predict illness before it occurs, and not just postpartum depression, we are on the cusp of fully understanding PMS, perimenopausal depression, potentially some forms of depression and anxiety in teenagers. It’s called Precision Psychiatry. This is not only posed to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, but it will move psychiatry away from just symptom control to much more effective prediction, prevention and cures of mental illness.
 
Global Impact of Our Mission
 
Today, emerging technologies like AI are opening possibilities like never before functioning as transformative accelerators for achieving core objectives to accelerate advances in health, equality, and justice. At the same time, it is increasingly recognized that the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has created, is actively being used as means to globally technology-facilitated gender-based violence against women and girls.
 
The UN is deeply concerned with accelerating collective efforts in achieving sustainable development, ensuring respect, addressing potential harms, protecting privacy, promoting ethics, and eliminating discrimination and violence including technology-facilitated gender-based violence. Given the unique vulnerability of young women to online harassment and gender-based violence, there is a critical need to protect the next generation of young mothers.
 
About Dionysus & Our Mission to Disrupt Our Existing Approach to Mental Illness
 
Named after Dionysus, the ancient original Greek God of Fertility but also representing creativity, transformation, and madness—Dionysus Health believes that maternal care is a critical opportunity in stopping the spread of generational trauma based mental illness. They have recognized that a fundamental key in addressing today’s mental health crisis lies in a recipe that combines human biology with human behavior at its very earliest beginnings in the newborn. But unlike physical illness, mental requires far more attention to our humanity, to how we feel, how we behave, and our innate fears of mental illness. To break the strangle hold of stigma on our attitudes.
 
To meet this critical need, Dionysus has developed a platform of proprietary epigenetic tests to predict the risk of hormonal depressions like postpartum depression (PPD) and to diagnose related mood disorders associated with PMS and menopause in women, and to determine the anti-depressant responder status in such women. These groundbreaking tests represent the first validated predictive biological tests in psychiatry, opening the door to a new era of precision psychiatry. Their first product – the “Enlighten Test™” for predicting the risk of postpartum depression, is anticipated to launch in early 2025. A second product focused on predicting depression leading up to menopause (perimenopause), is scheduled for release in the second half of 2025.
 
About The Human Trust
The mission of The Human Trust is to ensure that every family has affordable access to maternal healthcare while protecting their most precious data.  Furthermore, to revolutionize human development—health, education, and opportunity—while protecting privacy.  Starting with their founding partner, Dionysus Health, they’re working to end the corrosive effects of postpartum and perimenopausal depression.  From there, they’re already working more broadly on maternal healthcare deserts, early childhood development for new families, and a new vision of precision public health.
 
Dionysus and The Human Trust have opened discussions with major pharmaceutical, bio-pharmaceutical, and global consumer companies as well as organizations that have global reach to consumers. 
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