The Pulse by Wharton Digital Health Dr. Giovanni Colella, Vanna Health, on Reimagining Community-Based Care for Serious Mental Illness
In this episode of The Pulse, I had the opportunity to sit down with Giovanni Colella, MD - a psychiatrist and experienced healthcare entrepreneur - to discuss his journey from clinical care to company-building, and what it takes to design care models for healthcare’s most complex populations.
Over the past several decades, Giovanni has co-founded several influential healthcare companies, including RelayHealth (acquired by McKesson), Castlight Health, OODA Health (acquired by Cedar), Solara Health, and Brightline, focused on pediatric behavioral health. Today, he’s the co-founder and CEO of Vanna Health, a company delivering community-based care to individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), primarily within Medicaid populations. His perspective is shaped by both deep clinical training and lived experience building and operating companies at the intersection of care delivery, administration, and technology.
If you're interested in additional resources for staying up to speed on behavioral health, here is a list of Giovanni's podcast and newsletter recommendations:
- Hidden Brain (Podcast): The gold standard for understanding the unconscious patterns that drive our behavior.
- The Happiness Lab (Podcast): Yale professor Dr. Laurie Santos shares the actual science of well-being (and debunks common myths).
- Huberman Lab (Podcast): Great for deep dives into neuroscience and "tools" for mental and physical health.
- Wondermind (Newsletter): A fantastic resource for "mental fitness" with expert interviews and practical daily exercises.
- 3-2-1 by James Clear (Newsletter): While focused on habits, it’s rooted in behavioral science and offers great weekly reframes.
- Psych Central (Newsletter): A perfect weekly pulse-check on the latest evidence-based mental health research.