Safer Births
With Doulas
Pairing Black women with Doulas to provide the support they need during pregnancy, leading to a safer experience and better births.
COACHING CLIENTS TO NEW HEIGHTS
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Client
Black women desire safe and healthy pregnancies but encounter systemic barriers that hinder access to care.
Despite advances in medical care, Black mothers continue to face systemic barriers to accessing quality healthcare, resulting in preventable deaths and complications during childbirth. Structural racism, implicit biases among healthcare providers, and socioeconomic disparities all contribute to this crisis. Without urgent intervention, the disparities in maternal health outcomes will persist, perpetuating injustice and inequality within our healthcare system.
60% of pregnancy related deaths are preventable.
Who’s Impacted and How Can We Support Them?
To fully grasp the problem, we needed to collect relevant data to quantify how many people were impacted and identify any underlying factors that intensified the issue. By taking a research-driven approach, we could ensure our solutions were addressing the root causes and not just the symptoms.
More likely to have a birth complication
More likely to die during pregnancy or the following month
More likely to have health concerns within 6 months of delivery
Doulas have been proven to decrease pregnancy complications
Doulas provide emotional and informational support to pregnant women before, during, and after childbirth. They offer non-medical assistance, such as guiding relaxation techniques, offering physical comfort, and answering questions about the birthing process. Their role is to empower and advocate for the individual's preferences and needs during childbirth, ensuring they feel informed, confident, and supported.
In addition to their presence during labor, doulas often provide valuable postpartum care, helping families adjust to life with a newborn. This can include breastfeeding support, newborn care guidance, and emotional reassurance during the early stages of parenting, contributing to a smoother and more confident transition into parenthood.
Understanding Our Audience
Creating a two-sided marketplace involves deeply understanding the needs and pain points of both doulas and their clients in order to create a truly valuable product. For doulas, this means identifying what tools or features can help them streamline their work, manage their time more efficiently, and reach more clients. On the client side, it's about understanding their desire for reliable, accessible support throughout their pregnancy and postpartum journey, and creating a platform that meets those needs seamlessly.
Doulas
After speaking with over 20 doulas, it became clear that while their work is invaluable, their reach is often limited. Many struggled to take on more clients because they spent the majority of their time on business development rather than providing care.
As our conversations deepened, a common need emerged: doulas could benefit from a stronger presence in the digital space, which would streamline client intake and allow them to focus more on what truly matters—supporting their clients.
Mothers
In addition to speaking with mothers, we needed to ensure that there was enough demand to justify building the application. Through surveys we gauged enough interest from women willing to work with doulas digitally.
Considering this is a 'habit' type of problem where a solution exists, we would need to ensure that this solution is much better than the current model of care.
While understanding that this service would be useful, the real question is: would women pay for this service? A resounding yes from a significant percentage of our participants proved that if we could create an easy to use solution, Mae would be on it's way to becoming a successful long term business.
Easy Access to Doulas
After weeks of speaking with doulas and soon-to-be-mothers, it was time to narrow our focus on what we needed to include in our first iteration of the product. We set forth with a few key features that we believe gave us the best chance at creating a valuable experience for both sides of the marketplace.
For Mothers
Finding the right doula is a crucial decision during pregnancy, as each expectant mother seeks a unique partnership tailored to her specific needs. Recognizing this, we designed an experience that enables doulas to showcase their individual qualities and expertise through both video and text, helping mothers make a more informed and personalized choice.
Exploration
How could we best match doulas with expectant mothers? To find the ideal approach, we explored various options, including survey-style questionnaires, swipe-based methods similar to dating apps, and other potential solutions, testing each to see which would create the strongest connection and resonate most with users.
Doula Matching
Since video was the primary introduction method, we aimed to make it a central feature. Mothers would be presented with key information about each doula, and a 1-minute video where the doula introduces herself. Users could easily book an intro call to assess compatibility and take the next step in their journey together.
For Doulas
Client Management
A major benefit for doulas was the reduction in business development efforts, as clients could easily find them, while also simplifying client management so they could focus more on care.
Scheduling
Scheduling calls with clients could quickly become cumbersome, so integrating a built-in scheduling feature was essential to streamline the process.
Communication
Maintaining consistent communication throughout pregnancy was crucial for ensuring the health and safety of both mother and child.
Services
Doulas provide a range of packages, so it was essential to consider the unique offerings of each doula in our approach.
Exploration
Recognizing the need for swift progress, we decided to create page templates to provide our developer with a repeatable framework for quick development.
Client Management
Doulas required a method to easily view intro call requests and gain an overall overview of their roster of clients.
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Scheduling
We aimed to minimize the need for doulas to manage clients independently by providing a straightforward solution for aligning schedules between doulas and customers for their interactions.
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Services
Recognizing that each doula has a distinct style and range of services, we knew it was essential to create a feature that allowed them to offer customized packages. These packages would adapt over time to address each doula's specific needs.
Communication
Maintaining communication was vital throughout the process, as it allowed doulas and their clients to cultivate relationships grounded in trust and knowledge.
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A Brand That Cares
To establish the brand, we started by engaging with potential customers to understand their needs. We aimed to create a safe and positive experience for expectant mothers. Using mood boards, we quickly explored different aesthetic options until we found what resonated best.
The Future
The short term goal was to receive funding to eventually build out a mobile app making the experience even easier for doulas and soon-to-be mothers to connect.
Find
With a team of doulas, the first step for an expectant mother is to find one that aligns with their vision.
Free 15 minute call to ensure a connection
Digital and In-Person services available
Detailed reviews left by previous mothers
Connect
Create a connection with the doulas to ensure that the birthing needs are met and questions are answered.
Any time chat ability
Video calls twice per week
In-Person birthing event
Learn
Meet with instructors and take courses to learn as much as possible pre post birth.
10+ instructors
100+ courses
In-Person events in select cities nationwide
The Result
Mae Health Inc, announces the close of a seed raise, led by Jumpstart Nova, to scale its tech-enabled services offering to drive improvements in Black maternal health outcomes. Mae’s round also included participation from new investors including the Astia Fund, Impact Engine, Joyance Partners, and Gratitude Railroad, and early investors RH Capital, Avestria Ventures, Bright Ventures, and the Social Starts Health & Happiness Fund.
Mae is already making an impact
Supporting beneficiaries in six states across many of the largest Medicaid insurance plans
Achieving a 30% reduction in C-section rates and a 30% reduction in preterm birth rates (compared to the National averages for Black women)
Forging meaningful partnerships to support capacity building and sustainability for birth workers of color
Defining the MVP
The impact that doulas could have by simply digitalizing their process, reducing business development efforts enabling them to spend more time providing care was now solidified. The process of defining which hypotheses needed to be tested began.
Pair doulas and soon to be mothers
The first step of this process would be to match experienced doulas with pregnant women looking for help. Reducing the time that doulas would need to spend finding clients allowed them to provide more care.
Ensure a positive connection
After finding a potentially suitable match, meeting face-to-face via video was crucial to ensure that the doula and the woman were aligned on their approach to birth.
Educational resources
In addition to the personal support doulas offer, we aimed to make sure the platform was helpful for mothers to learn independently. Many doulas we talked to create and sell their own content.
By allowing them to share their content on the platform and get paid for it, we not only give moms more resources but also give doulas another way to earn money.
Work With Me
Have a story to tell? Lets work together.