Meet Dr. Matthew Chow: TELUS Health’s Chief Mental Health Officer, physician leader and medical specialist in psychiatry.
Dr. Chow is an experienced health systems leader with extensive expertise in mental health, healthcare innovation and governance. He shapes TELUS Health’s mental health, wellbeing and innovation strategy across the world. A key contributor to our strategic thought leadership initiatives, Dr. Chow actively participates on boards and forums focusing on health research, community health, wellbeing interventions and executive leadership.
Dr. Chow’s mission is to help advance physical, mental and financial wellbeing for individuals and organizations worldwide. In this article, he talks about his role at TELUS Health and shares his views on how organizations can better support employee wellbeing.
Interview with Dr. Matthew Chow
Q: How long have you been working for TELUS Health, and what inspired you to join the organization?
A: I joined TELUS Health four years ago after spending 15 years in practice and medical leadership. I was attracted by the opportunity to make a difference on a global scale by improving people’s health in the workplace.
Q: What would you say the main areas of focus in your role are?
A: My mandate is to help shape TELUS Health’s care, wellbeing and innovation strategies globally. I do this by focusing on three main areas:
- Global workplace evolution: I look at how economic conditions, multi-generational workplaces and new technologies have been impacting workplaces world-wide. It’s critical that we understand how global factors are impacting employee wellbeing, so we can learn how to better support them.
- AI implementation in healthcare: Digital innovation is key when it comes to increasing access to care and improving health outcomes worldwide. I’m interested in seeing how we can integrate privacy, security, bioethics and human aspects into trustworthy A.I.
- Global health innovations: I help design unique products and services that focus on holistic health – mental, physical and financial – that can be scaled worldwide.
Q: What is your vision for the future of healthcare?
A: I see a future where health and wellbeing are defined by our ability to connect humans to each other, and also to themselves. I strongly believe we need to focus on removing barriers to accessing care to improve overall wellbeing.
To help remove barriers, we need to make data about ourselves and our communities accessible and meaningful – and we also need to innovate using digital technologies such as artificial intelligence to reduce the friction in our health and wellbeing journey.
Q: What do you love most about your role with TELUS Health?
A: My favourite part is the variety of ways that I support people’s wellbeing. In any given week I may be recording a podcast about workplace wellbeing trends, helping a promising health startup company to scale their impact, collaborating on health A.I. projects with team members around the world, or helping government and corporate leaders meet their business and wellbeing objectives.
Q: How is the work you do positively impacting the lives of employees across the world?
A: As a doctor, I know what it is like to make a positive impact on individuals and families. My role at TELUS Health is to translate that into something that can benefit millions of people. I help shape products and services that make it easier to access care, to take control of one’s own health, to prevent illness and ultimately to thrive.
Q: How are you and your team contributing to TELUS Health’s goal of creating healthier workplaces?
A: My colleagues and I are working tirelessly to reduce the friction in our workplaces that contributes to suboptimal business and wellbeing outcomes. We create digital products that make it easier and more intuitive to access wellbeing support anywhere, anytime, in any language.
We also lean into A.I. to expand the capacity of our human experts, in order to reach more people and break down barriers to accessing help and advice. We keep a close eye on threats to workplace wellbeing such as social isolation, chronic disease burden, intergenerational differences, change fatigue, and yes, even uncertainty around A.I.
We help organizations understand where they stand with respect to their own teams, their own data, and trends in their industries – so that they can make decisions that positively impact their financial outcomes while having the healthiest employees.
Q: What would be your core message to organizations when it comes to supporting employee wellbeing?
A: The biggest risk facing organizations is not taking the mental health crisis seriously, and taking steps to understand how they can support a multi-generation workforce with tailored initiatives. For example, while many discount Gen Z and their attitudes towards work – they’re actually “playing the long game” by valuing health, boundaries and workplace mental health programs.
My advice to employers is to take a good look at your health and benefits support, and consider how to level up what is provided to fit the context of the 21st century. This doesn’t always require spending more money – but it does require being thoughtful about deploying evidence-based and innovative solutions.
Q: And finally, Matt, how do TELUS’ values resonate with you and support your personal health and wellbeing?
A: I am proud to see TELUS put team members’ health and work-life balance first by championing programs such as flexible ‘WorkStyles’ years before ‘work from home’ and ‘hybrid work’ were popularized.
TELUS also offers very competitive mental health benefits to team members and their families — something that would have made a huge difference to me personally when I was a teen — and has a strong culture around giving back to communities.
We work hard as a team and as individual team members. There are certainly challenging days just as there are in any high-performing organization, but the TELUS values shine through and help us carry forward to be both competitive and driven by social purpose— a balance that few companies ever find.