health-equity
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Berkeley Media Studies Group asks who is missing from the story
A Berkeley research group counts the voices and ideas that health coverage leaves out. Then it helps advocates put them back into the public debate.
Before you change a mind, change the message
Young Communications Group helps public institutions speak to the communities they need to reach. Its work shows why the useful part of a campaign often happens before anyone writes the ad.
The Berkeley team that lets the reader rewrite the instructions
Health Research for Action turns public-health research into guides, tools, and messages people can use. Its most revealing work begins when the intended audience finds something the experts missed.
Change Craft puts the audience in the writing room
The Sacramento communications firm brings young people, community leaders, and public agencies into the same conversation. Its work reveals how much a campaign depends on who helps make it - and who controls the budget.
DC Design asks who your plan forgot
A college asked for a strategy. DC Design gave it a workbook. Inside the consulting firm that lets the people living a problem change the assignment.
Graham & Walker turned a support group into a $10 million fund
Leslie Feinzaig built a community for founders who struggled to get heard. Now Graham & Walker writes early checks, teaches the mechanics of fundraising, and asks whether every founder needs venture capital at all.
California Dental Association wants the next appointment to matter
CDA helps 27,000 members handle the business of dentistry. Its foundation’s shift from pop-up relief to ongoing care reveals the harder job: keeping patients connected after the volunteers go home.
The 61,000-Square-Kilometre Health Network Betting That Rural Care Should Grow Its Own Talent
Interlake-Eastern RHA cannot shrink Manitoba's distances. So it is changing who gets trained, where specialists show up and how patients enter the system - a practical rural-health playbook with visible gains and stubborn limits.
Meridian Built a $2.5 Billion Medicaid Machine - Here’s the Local Playbook Health-Tech Founders Can Steal
A Detroit physician and his family turned a small Medicaid plan into a $2.5 billion acquisition. Inside Meridian’s enduring formula: win the public contract, build the provider plumbing, and treat food, housing and transportation as part of the product.
Neopenda Went to an Equipment Graveyard and Built the Baby Monitor Hospitals Would Actually Use
A student project became neoGuard only after Sona Shah and Teresa Cauvel saw why donated hospital equipment was collecting dust in Uganda. Their harder lesson was that a device clinicians want is not automatically a device health systems will buy.
Somatus Bet $465 Million That the Best Kidney Business Prevents Dialysis
The McLean healthcare company built a national care layer around a simple, expensive idea: find kidney and heart trouble earlier, bring clinicians into the home, and get paid when patients stay healthier. The promise is compelling. The execution depends on data, patient trust, and risk contracts all working at once.
Twentyeight Health Put Medicaid at the Center - Then Built the Women’s Clinic the Internet Was Missing
The company started with a five-minute birth-control intake. Its bigger bet is that accepting Medicaid, stitching care to insurance and staying useful after the first prescription can turn a commodity telehealth visit into a durable women’s-health platform.
The Pregnancy Test That Could Catch a Killer Before the Doctor Does
Preeclampsia kills tens of thousands of mothers a year, mostly because no one catches it in time. A team that started as classmates in Durham and Kampala wants to move that first warning from the hospital lab to the bathroom shelf.
The Birmingham startup that made pharma pay for trust it never earned
Del Smith and Tiffany Whitlow built a 200,000-member community first and an AI second - and got seven of the ten biggest drug makers to buy the trust they earned.
The Healthcare Fund Betting the Best Founders Are the Ones Venture Capital Missed
Seae Ventures was built by healthcare insiders who saw two blind spots at once: patients the system underserved and founders the funding system overlooked. Its answer is a portfolio designed around access, outcomes and the practical machinery of care.
Rock Health Built a Three-Lane Highway Through Digital Health
The San Francisco institution does not make a health app. It does something harder to package: it helps capital, evidence, and healthcare operators find one another before expensive ideas become expensive mistakes.
The Fund Betting That the Poorest ZIP Codes Are the Best Returns
Andy Slavitt ran Medicare. Now he runs a $1.4 billion fund arguing that the patients Wall Street ignores are where the money is - and the math, so far, agrees.
The Billionaire-Backed LLC That Refuses to Pick Just One Lever
Emerson Collective can write a grant, take an equity stake, convene a coalition, or back a story. That flexibility is its product - and its central bet on how difficult public problems get solved.
The Hospital Built Around a Small but Radical Idea: Kids Aren't Tiny Adults
For more than a century, Children's Minnesota has designed care around the biology, fears and families of young patients. Its scale is large, but its strategic advantage is unusually specific: everything is built for kids.
The Health Center That Put a Whole Community on the Care Team
On West Oʻahu, health care is not confined to an exam room. WCCHC built a community-owned system where emergency medicine, food access, job training and Native Hawaiian healing share the same address.
VSP Vision
VSP Vision is the largest not-for-profit vision benefits and eye care company in the United States, founded in 1955 by a group of Northern California optometrists who pioneered the idea of prepaid vision insurance. Headquartered in Rancho Cordova, California, VSP now operates a vertically integrated portfolio spanning vision insurance, eyewear brands (Marchon, Altair, Marcolin), lens technology (VSP Optics), retail (Visionworks, Eyeconic), and practice-management software (Eyefinity). Backed by roughly 85 million members and a network of tens of thousands of independent eye doctors, the company frames its mission as empowering human potential through sight, and funds one of the industry's largest charitable arms, VSP Eyes of Hope.
Ash
Ash (poweredbyash.com) is a New York-based health technology company that gives healthcare organizations a customizable, white-label platform for at-home diagnostic testing. Founded in 2019 as a direct-to-consumer sexual health testing service for the LGBTQ+ community, Ash pivoted to a B2B model that lets health plans, digital health companies and public health agencies launch branded testing programs across 100+ biomarkers in all 50 states. The company handles kit design, a vetted lab network, multilingual patient engagement, logistics and real-time reporting through one API, and has shipped more than 500,000 kits while helping organizations close care gaps and improve HEDIS and Star Ratings measures.
Blooming Health
Blooming Health is a New York-based social care technology company using AI to automate access to social services for older adults and vulnerable populations. Its AI-assisted, multilingual platform engages people across text, voice, and email to detect needs, screen for benefits, and connect them to services like meals, transportation, housing assistance, and Medicaid or SNAP recertification. Sold to Area Agencies on Aging, government agencies, community-based organizations, and healthcare providers, the platform has connected over 1.5 million people across roughly two dozen states and raised $32.5 million to date, including a $26 million Series A led by Insight Partners in April 2025.
Healthy.io
Healthy.io turns the smartphone camera into a clinical-grade medical device for at-home diagnostics. Founded in Israel in 2013 by Yonatan Adiri, the company uses computer vision, AI and colorimetric analysis to let patients run lab-quality urine tests at home - for kidney disease, urinary tract infections and pregnancy - and gives clinicians AI-powered 3D wound measurement tools. Its flagship Minuteful Kidney test is the first smartphone-powered home test cleared by the FDA to measure the albumin-to-creatinine ratio, and its products are used across US health plans and UK NHS trusts to close gaps in preventative care.
Resilienci.ai
Resilienci.ai is an Austin-based digital health company using artificial intelligence, machine learning and hyperlocal data to help people and public health agencies understand and reduce infectious-disease risk. Founded by Eric Klasson and operating as a Pandemic Insights company, it builds a free consumer mobile app paired with a web-based platform for health agencies, aiming to deliver the world's first interoperable, multi-pathogen digital health solution for outbreaks and pandemics.
Delfina
Delfina is a San Francisco-based maternal health company that pairs an AI-powered clinical platform with a consumer pregnancy app to make prenatal care proactive rather than reactive. Its predictive models flag rising risk - preterm birth, hypertensive disorders, gestational diabetes - while patients track vitals from home and connect around the clock with bilingual virtual doulas, dietitians, and mental health support. Founded in 2021 by physician-scientist Dr. Senan Ebrahim and his co-founders, Delfina sells to health plans, providers, and employers, and has raised roughly $22M to date, including a $17M Series A in January 2025.
Plume Clinic
Plume Clinic is a Denver-based telehealth company built for and largely by the transgender community, offering gender-affirming hormone therapy, everyday medical care, medical letters of support, and community programming entirely through a phone. Founded in 2019 by physicians Dr. Jerrica Kirkley and Dr. Matthew Wetschler, Plume has served over 50,000 trans and gender non-conforming people across nearly every U.S. state, positioning itself as the first and largest health-tech company designed specifically for trans lives.
Simple HealthKit
Simple HealthKit is a Milpitas, California-based digital health company building end-to-end healthcare infrastructure that unifies at-home and in-clinic diagnostics, a CLIA-certified lab, telehealth, and follow-up care into a single platform. Founded in 2018 by biochemist Sheena Menezes, the company targets health equity by making testing for sexual health, respiratory illness (COVID/flu/RSV), and chronic conditions like diabetes accessible and affordable for underserved populations, selling primarily to health plans, retailers, pharmacies, employers, schools, and public health organizations.
Bloom Care
Bloom Care is a Brazilian femtech building the country's largest virtual clinic for women's and family health. Founded in 2017 by three women, its app pairs members with gynecologists, obstetricians, pediatricians, psychologists and nutritionists for continuous, evidence-based care across the full life journey - from menstrual health and fertility through pregnancy, postpartum, parenting and menopause. Sold mostly through employers and health plans on a B2B2C model, Bloom counts partners like Sanofi, SulAmérica, Natura and Nestlé, and was named to CB Insights' Digital Health 150.
EatWell Meal Kits
EatWell is a Boston-based social-impact startup that turns meal kits into a healthcare intervention. Founded by Harvard School of Public Health students, it produces prescription meal kits - fresh ingredients plus fast, culturally relevant recipes designed by a Michelin-trained chef - that healthcare providers and insurers prescribe to patients facing food insecurity and chronic disease. Kits are made in Dorchester at CommonWealth Kitchen by production staff hired from the communities EatWell serves, and are reimbursed through MassHealth ACO Flexible Services and health-system partnerships under the growing 'Food is Medicine' model.