underserved-communities
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The App That Turned Payday Loans Into a Neighborly Favor
SoLo Funds built a lending marketplace with no interest and no mandatory fees, betting that strangers would rather help strangers than let a payday lender do it. Two million users later, the model is either a fix for broken small-dollar credit or a regulatory magnet - and the founders keep insisting it is the first.
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.
Bluebird Kids Health
Bluebird Kids Health is a Boston-founded pediatric primary care company delivering value-based, tech-enabled medicine to children in underserved Florida communities. It combines physical and behavioral health under one roof, offers 24/7 access and telehealth, and gets paid to keep kids well rather than per visit. Led by former Landmark Health CEO Chris Johnson, it raised $31.5M in 2025 to expand its network of NCQA-recognized clinics serving roughly 20,000 mostly Medicaid-enrolled patients.
Grapevine Health
Grapevine Health is a Washington, DC-based digital health media company founded by physician and epidemiologist Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick. It creates culturally relevant, plain-language health content and delivers it through trusted messengers, street-level conversations, and an SMS platform called HealthText to raise health literacy and build trust among Medicaid enrollees and other underserved communities.
Cityblock Health
Cityblock Health is a New York-based, technology-driven healthcare company that delivers integrated primary care, behavioral health, and social services to Medicaid and dually eligible (Medicare-Medicaid) members in underserved communities. Spun out of Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs in 2017, Cityblock pairs neighborhood-based care teams with a custom care-management platform to treat the whole person - medical needs alongside housing, food, and other social drivers of health - under value-based, risk-sharing contracts with health plans. It serves more than 100,000 members across over ten states.
La Clínica de La Raza
La Clínica de La Raza is one of the largest community-based primary health care providers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Founded in 1971 in Oakland's Fruitvale district by UC Berkeley students and community activists, it is a federally qualified health center (FQHC) delivering culturally appropriate medical, dental, behavioral health, vision, and pharmacy services to roughly 90,000 patients a year across more than 35 sites in Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano Counties - regardless of a patient's ability to pay.