GIMBHI‘s Q&A with Stance Health’s Co-Founder, Adam Katzman

Adam began his career as part of the founding team at SmileDirectClub (SDC), where he helped scale the company from an early-stage digital health pioneer to a publicly traded company. His passion within digital health is through democratizing access to care, focusing on underserved areas. At SDC, Adam cultivated a team to launch a suite of oral care products, designed to complement aligner sales, scaling those products into 7,000+ retail locations at Walmart and CVS.

Adam’s experience across healthcare and retail deepened his passion for expanding access to care across other verticals, particularly in mental health. Alongside his co-founder, Brad Baum, he recognized a gap in access for chronic pain sufferers—many of whom lack the resources and access to a highly specialized pain psychotherapist.

He is also an avid Michigan Wolverines fan and currently resides in Miami, Florida.


Why did you start Stance Health?

We started Stance Health to address a glaring gap in chronic pain care. While the biopsychosocial model is recognized as the gold standard of care, the vast majority of patients lack access to the psychological component of treatment. We've seen firsthand how deeply chronic pain can impact mental health, with this population facing five times the risk of anxiety and depression, which in turn intensifies their pain. We're building Stance Health to bridge the gap for the 67 million Americans living with chronic pain by making specialized, chronic-pain-focused psychotherapy accessible and affordable.


What makes our product unique?

We specialize in the psychological side of chronic pain. We connect people living with chronic pain to therapists trained specifically in pain management, making gold-standard care accessible. Our unique focus on pain-specialized psychotherapy, our insurance-covered model, and our direct physician referral network position us as a missing piece in the chronic pain care system


What does Stance Health look like in 5-10 years?

We see Stance Health delivering world-class care to millions of people living with chronic pain. Our goal is to provide access and support this population needs — care that treats both the mind and the body to deliver meaningfully better outcomes. We envision a future where pain-specialized psychotherapy is widely accessible and affordable to the masses, helping people find lasting relief, and preventing the devastating cycle of opioid use disorder that so often starts with pain.

Subscribe to news and reports about mental health startups & mental health investors at gimbhi.substack.com