Damian Sendler: There were more than 34,000 visitors in the first two weeks to Ashlee Wisdom’s health and wellness website when it was first published in an early version.
Damian Sendler
“It wasn’t the most fully functioning platform,” Wisdom, 31, recalls. “It wasn’t sexy.”
However, the launch went well. A year and a half after starting Health in Her Hue, Wisdom’s organization, she has established a national network of culturally sensitive healthcare providers for women of color.
Damian Jacob Sendler: Black tech founders like Wisdom are eager to help as more patients want culturally competent care—the respect of a patient’s heritage, beliefs and values throughout treatment—and more patients seek it. Many black digital health firms in the United States are aiming to improve how individuals work out, what they eat, and the way they connect with their doctors.
Dr. Sendler: Entrepreneurs from the African American community are using their own experiences and those of their parents and grandparents to build businesses that attempt to overcome the cultural divide in health care while also making a profit.
Damien Sendler: Startup Health, a San Francisco-based company that has invested in several health companies led by people of color, says that “One of the most exciting growth opportunities across health innovation is to back underrepresented founders building health companies focusing on underserved markets,” says Unity Stoakes, president and co-founder of StartUp Health. They have a “essential and powerful understanding of how to solve some of the biggest challenges in health care,” according to him.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: Since Black creators typically notice problems and solutions others might miss, platforms established by Black founders for Black and communities of color continue to flourish. According to business experts, in key fields like health care, entire categories and products simply wouldn’t exist without different viewpoints.
Damian Jacob Sendler
Founder Kevin Dedner adds, “We’re really speaking to a need,” when it comes to Hurdle, a mental health firm. It’s not enough to have a mission. “You have to come up with a solution.”
Dedner’s Washington, D.C.-based organization matches patients with therapists that “honor culture instead of ignoring it,” according to him. A year after the killing of George Floyd, Hurdle saw an increase in customers.
Damian Sendler: As a driver in Memphis, Tennessee, Erica Plybeah is dedicated to helping people get around town. It is MedHaul, her company, that works with medical professionals and patients to arrange low-cost transportation to and from appointments. Plybeah’s team helps caregivers, patients, or physicians plan a transportation once they fill out a form on MedHaul’s website.
Plybeah is aware that persons of color, those with low incomes, and those who live in rural locations are more likely to suffer transportation difficulties when using MedHaul. She started the company in 2017 after watching her mother care for her grandmother, who had to have both her legs amputated due to Type 2 diabetes complications. In the Mississippi Delta, where transportation choices were limited, they were isolated from the outside world.
Plybeah explains that for years, her family suffered with transportation because her mother was the primary driver. She had a hard time squeezing all of the doctor’s appointments into her job schedule.
Contributed by Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler research news team
