Attruby maker BridgeBio is re-upping its “Don’t Pass on Your Heart Health” campaign with a fresh new beat.
To gear up for World Amyloidosis Day at the end of the month, the company is debuting new educational content on YouTube Oct. 6. With the help of transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) advocate Howard “H” White, journalist Sway Calloway and Hip Hop Public Health founders Doug E. Fresh and Olajide Williams, M.D., BridgeBio is using hip-hop, culture and trusted voices to close the awareness gap around ATTR-CM.
“We wanted to bring the science out of strictly clinical settings and into the communities and everyday conversations where awareness can lead to action,” BridgeBio’s chief scientific officer Uma Sinha, Ph.D., explained over email. “Hip Hop Public Health was a natural partner because they understand how to make complex health information accessible, relevant and actionable.”
Hip Hop Public Health, a Fierce 50 of 2026 honoree, is a 2006-founded nonprofit that creates educational resources based around catchy hip-hop music. Williams and Fresh initially came together to boost stroke awareness in Harlem with their “Stroke Ain’t No Joke” song and have expanded to different awareness causes since.
“Hip-hop has an extraordinary ability to connect across generations and communities, and Hip Hop Public Health has demonstrated how music and culture can make health education more approachable without diminishing the science behind it,” Sinha said.
ATTR-CM is an underrecognized cause of heart failure, as symptoms of fatigue and shortness of breath can often be misattributed to aging or more common cardiac conditions. White’s lived experience with the condition will take center stage in the awareness push, with Calloway moderating a panel including White and Fresh that will hit YouTube on Oct. 6.
As Sinha and BridgeBio see it, health information is more likely to stick when delivered through voices and “cultural touchpoints people recognize and trust.” Another trusted voice that has previously joined “Don’t Pass on Your Heart Health” is Hollywood legend Morgan Freeman, who linked up with White and BridgeBio back in April for the campaign.
With Freeman joining in as a “trusted, widely recognized voice,” sharing White’s journey with the heart condition demonstrated “the power of storytelling to make a complex and often overlooked disease feel immediate and relevant,” Sinha explained. White, a Nike executive, uses the companmy's ATTR-CM med Attruby.
Throughout the month, BridgeBio will work with community partners such as the Association of Black Cardiologists, 100 Black Men of the Bay Area, National Medical Association and more to expand the reach of the educational campaign through “local conversations and programming,” according to Sinha.
The ATTR-CM awareness gap is of particular concern for Black communities, as some one in 25 Black Americans carry a gene variant associated with an increased risk of developing ATTR-CM. White’s story helps “translate those statistics and clinical facts into something people can recognize in their own lives,” Sinha said, and serves as a reminder for others to pay attention to their own bodies and bring up concerns with healthcare providers.
“If the program helps even one person think differently about persistent or unexplained symptoms, or encourages someone to advocate for answers, we will have accomplished something meaningful,” Sinha said.