The articles about Black women’s health quickly pulled in readers who formed an online community, which mirrored the community forming around Wisdom in real life, as many of her grad school friends and other women of color rallied around her, excited to work with her pro bono and help her build the site. “How can I make content more culturally relevant and less academic, bring it to Black women where they are, and build a community around the mission and vision of what I want to ultimately build?” Wisdom asked herself. Health in Her Hue’s (HIHH) first feature was content, since Wisdom had no engineering training, but she loved to write.
“I wanted to understand the broader issues of Black women”
The funding round put Cityblock’s valuation at over $1 billion, highlighting that caring for overlooked populations isn’t an afterthought: it’s the future.
#Folx health insurance series
Toyin Ajayi, the co-founder, president and chief health officer of Cityblock Health, which serves the Medicaid and lower-income Medicare population, closed a $192 million Series C in March. Breitenstein, has raised nearly $30 million since its December launch. FOLX Health, a digital healthcare platform aimed at the LGBTQIA+ community founded by A.G. Wisdom, 31, is one of a cohort of female-identifying founders seeking to design a more inclusive healthcare system by meeting the needs of people who have historically been marginalized, excluded, and mistreated by the medical profession.
#Folx health insurance full
Now, the app is poised for a full build-out after Wisdom closed her $1 million pre-seed round last month. The Health in Her Hue website launched in 2018, and its related app in 2020 with the support of a $10,000 grant from a brand campaign headed by Serena Williams, alongside the non-profit Vital Voices and the shoe brand Stuart Weitzman. She knew firsthand the importance of receiving culturally competent care, so she began working on a potential solution: a website to help women like her navigate the healthcare system and find providers “who understand the lived experiences and the social context of Black women and women of color,” as Wisdom put it. These issues, of course, were not merely academic for her she recalls reading a paper about the social factors that play a role in the racial disparities in health outcomes, and feeling tears stream down her face. “I share so much more with my Black gynecologist.”īlack women face worse outcomes than white women for a range of health concerns, from maternal mortality to heart disease. “I thought about my interactions with her and my interactions with my Black gynecologist, and they’re completely different,” Wisdom said. It struck her that had she felt as comfortable talking with her white allergist as with her Black ob-gyn, she might have been able to share a fuller picture of her life, including her stressful work environment, which her allergist could have likely deduced was causing the hives. An allergist ran tests but couldn’t find anything wrong with her she prescribed her Allegra to keep the itching under control.Īs a master’s student at New York University School of Global Public Health, Wisdom regularly read papers about the impact of racism on health. She described one of the departments she worked at as emotionally toxic, especially for Wisdom, a Black woman, and her colleagues of color, evidenced by their high turnover rate. In 2018, Ashlee Wisdom was working at an academic medical center during graduate school when she started breaking out in chronic hives.
0 kommentar(er)
