Season 3 Episode 6 (25): ViVE Health Equity Series - Expect and Wolomi
If you’ve been paying any attention to health news and health equity discussions over the past few years, you know that the maternal mortality rate for Black women is 2.6 TIMES the rate for white women in the RICHEST country in the world. This is unacceptable.
The two founders we’re talking to today are standing up for women and pushing a system that continuously underserves women of color by design, to work for all women, and thus, all of US.
Welcome to Treat Us Right, Expect and Wolomi.
Episode Summary
In this episode, two companies focused on women's health and wellness are featured. The first company, Expect, is a streaming fitness platform specifically designed for pregnancy and postnatal fitness. The workouts on Expect are approved by OBGYNs and aim to improve outcomes for both mothers and babies. The founder, Dara Cook, discusses the importance of maternal fitness and the need to make it accessible to all women, especially women of color who are disproportionately affected by maternal mortality rates. The second company, Wolomi, is a digital platform that provides support and resources for women of color during their pregnancy and motherhood journey. The founder, Layo George, emphasizes the importance of creating a safe space for moms and addressing maternal mental health. Both companies are working towards promoting health equity and overcoming challenges such as fundraising and partnering with health plans.
Transcript
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Dara Cook, CEO Expect (00:04):
Maternal fitness has been the secret of the wealthy for a long time.
Host, David S. Williams III (00:11):
Hey, Treat Us Righters! It's your host, David Williams, CEO of Care3. And I'm back with two more featured companies from our ViVE conference series. The ViVE Conference was in Los Angeles two weeks ago and we're still bursting with enthusiasm for people we met who are building companies to help us get treated right this month. March, 2024 is Women's History Month and last Friday was International Women's Day. This episode features two companies built for women by women. But before we get to that, if you're a regular Treat Us Righter, I have told the story of the most important woman in my life growing up, my mother, and how she inspired me to build multiple companies that make healthcare work for everyone. But one of the points of the story I mentioned but gloss over is that my mother almost died giving birth to me. During her pregnancy with me, my mother was diagnosed with small bowel cancer. Imagine how this strained her health As I grew within her, this complication among others, contributed to my premature birth. At 32 weeks, I weighed three pounds, 11 ounces. I had a collapsed lung and uncertain prospects for living and thriving.
(01:49)
I ended up spending six weeks in the NICU. Mom, she went home weighing only 87 pounds with uncertain prospects of her own. What I didn't recognize growing up but know now is that her survival drive against all odds—her indomitable—was passed on to me. I guess you could say it was the first lesson she ever taught me to live.
And live. We did.
Mom lived another 38 years after my birth amidst multiple health scares where she was told she had only months to live. I have taken that first lesson and all of the others to build a good life for myself and my family, but also to help others live through challenging and complex health situations to help us get treated right now. I wish my mom's story of life-threatening complications during pregnancy was uncommon, but among black women it happens far too often.
(03:10)
If you've been paying any attention to the health news and health equity discussions over the past few years, you know that the maternal mortality rate for black women is 2.6 times the rate for white women in the richest country in the world. This is unacceptable. So the two founders we're talking to today are standing up for women and pushing a system that continuously under serves women of color by design to work for all women. And thus, all of us welcome to Treat Us Right, Expect and Wolomi. First up is Dara Cook, founder and CEO of Expect. Dara, welcome to the Treat Us Right Podcast.
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (04:08):
Thank you so much for having me.
Host, David S. Williams III (04:11):
Well, first, like all of the companies that we're featuring in this series that originated from the Vibe 2024 LA Conference, tell us who you are and about expect.
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (04:25):
So I'm Dera Cook Expect is streaming fitness optimized for pregnancy and postnatal, and we are the only platform where every workout is approved by OBGYNs. The reason we started this is because as you know, as many of us know is the United States is in a maternal and now infant health emergency. Our maternal mortality rates have been rising steadily for over two decades, and now for the first time in 20 years, our infant mortality rate is rising and it's rising across races. So unfortunately it does make sense. You can't have an increasing maternal mortality rate for so long without babies being negatively impacted. And so that's where we are right now. Exercising in pregnancy and after pregnancy is proven to improve outcomes for moms and babies. So that's why we're doing this.
Host, David S. Williams III (05:25):
That's fantastic. So is it a video platform? How would somebody view the videos?
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (05:32):
Yes, so it is a streaming video platform. While we say if you can access YouTube, you can access expect it's that easy to use. We're in the app store. We also have a beta that's in the Google Play Store and we have an array of workouts. So we have all three trimesters of pregnancy. We pre-pregnancy, which is fitness for fertility. We do postnatal. So you can work out with us after you've given birth. And we believe the broadest variety in the pregnancy space, and that's because we are OB GYN approved. So that means we have an advisory of 16 OBGYNs, including Rachel Villanueva, who is the former president of the National Medical Association, which is the largest and oldest association of black physicians. And Iman Lee, who is the leading global expert on physical activity in particular physical activity in women. She's a professor at Harvard Medical School and she co-authored two of the landmark studies on the impact of prenatal fitness. So she's also on our advisory. So before any fitness content gets on our platform, we run it by our advisory of OBGYNs. And so in the app itself, you'll see that we have doctor's notes. Literally these are notes from the doctors about each of the workouts, the stages of pregnancy that it's approved for or postnatal and any other special tips and guidance
Host, David S. Williams III (07:12):
That is impressive. And what a great advisory board you have convened. You talked about the mortality rates. You talked about how they seem to be distributed among races. Can you go deeper on that and really talk about how expect promotes health equity?
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (07:36):
Maternal fitness has been the secret of the wealthy for a long time. One of my best friends from college, she has four kids, you probably know her. And two, we went together. She is a medical doctor. She has her own practice and she had great laborers with all four of her children and they're absolutely fantastic and beautiful. She hired a private trainer, certified in pre and postnatal fitness to work out with her while she was pregnant, and she has a beautiful family. As a result, this is something that has not been typically available to the average woman, so to speak. So what we're doing is we're democratizing access to high quality doctor approved pre and postnatal fitness. Like we said, if you can stream videos on YouTube, you can access expect. We have a study with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which is the number five OBTY department in the country, and they have a brick and mortar exercise in pregnancy clinic at UAB.
(08:43)
And this is, I've been to the facility, it's a fantastic state-of-the art, it's huge facility where you're pregnant, you come there and you work out. And UAB has invested in this because women who exercise in pregnancy have much lower risk of complications as do their babies. But they did say that there's an equity issue with women accessing this gym that what they tend to get is women who are upper middle class wealthy women who are able to access this facility because it's open during business hours, right? Work hours. So they're saying it's women who aren't working right, who are being taken care of by their husbands. So they can come to this facility on a Tuesday at 11 o'clock, they have childcare if they have other children at home, they have accessible childcare. The problem is that the women who are most likely to experience complications are women who are not in that category.
(09:47)
They needed to partner with a platform, a company, and a solution that empowers women to work out in their own homes on their own time. So we know that if you're working odd hours, if you don't have transportation, if you don't have the ability to have someone watch your kids while you work out, that's what expect does is that we have workouts that range from five minutes on up to 45 minutes. So if you're dealing with time confetti, meaning you have just strands of time, you don't have long blocks of time. That's the reality for so many women. You've got 10 minutes here while the 2-year-old is taking a nap. You've got 30 minutes in between Zooms. That's not enough time for you to get up and go to a gym, but it is enough time for you to pop up one of our videos and work out in your own home.
(10:40)
So that's how we're promoting health equity and we are truly the most diverse platform out there. Diversity for us is a part of our ethos. It's a way of life. We noticed that the pre and postnatal fitness platforms, the few that are out there have largely ignored black women. They don't include them in the content. A lot of the big ones only have one black woman featured across all of their content. We oftentimes have more than one in one video. So I say they only have one in their entire platform. We know that black women have the most to gain from exercising and pregnancy. And I spent 20 years at MTV where that's where I learned how to create content and I was head creative of the MTV Video Music Awards and brand manager of Walden out. And what we all know from that world of entertainment is that people need to see themselves reflected on screen so that the content will resonate with them. So we bring that ethos into how we produce our content. Our instructors are all fitness professionals, but our background talent, these are women who look like people. We know these are women who have day jobs and sometimes they order pizza because that's the easiest thing for them to get. They're not rail thin. Even in pregnancy, you see a lot of these fitness apps, they show women who are pregnant, you can't even tell they're pregnant. They're so thin.
Host, David S. Williams III (12:12):
Yeah, I've seen those. And it's interesting that you bring this up because the representation matters. Movement is also getting pushback in and of itself. The question I have for you on that front is what challenges are you facing in kind of rolling out access to Expect and how do you plan to overcome those challenges?
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (12:39):
It's really about fundraising, but we've been fortunate to have an amazing group of angels and they truly deserve the name Angels. They're angels in many ways, and we have some announcements coming up soon I can't talk about right now, but really it's fundraising. That's all it is. But the macroeconomic environment is turning around. We heard some good things from Jerome Powell, some good signals. So I'm optimistic.
Host, David S. Williams III (13:16):
Now. Are you a direct to consumer platform with a subscription service or how else would somebody be able to access?
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (13:24):
Yeah, two ways you can access it directly. We are also direct to consumer. We were fortunate in that the great McKinsey and company selected expect as one of three startups. They would consult for pro bono. So that was really fantastic. And we went in to our engagement with McKinsey with a strict B two B2C model selling into health insurers, providers, employer sponsored health plans. And McKinsey said, you also have this huge direct to consumer opportunity. We believe in it so much, we're going to dedicate a team for you to explore that and do your first direct to consumer campaign. So we did that and Google was a huge help to us on that. And so big shout out to Google and Dale all at Google. And also we ran tests through Meta and we got our first paying direct to consumer customers that way. We're also going to have an announcement soon about a payer arrangement that we have
Host, David S. Williams III (14:29):
Payer Mean Health plan.
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (14:31):
Yes. Health plan, yes. That's really huge in terms of validation of our business model and the cost saving impact of maternal fitness because women of childbearing age are so expensive to ensure they're almost three times more expensive to ensure than men and all of the same age. And all that is driven by the high cost of pregnancy complications, which can be prevented through fitness. This is a really effective and elegant way to reduce costs for this high cost population.
Host, David S. Williams III (15:04):
This is incredible. I really am excited about Expect. How can people learn more and contact you with more questions or if they're interested in A DTC subscription?
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (15:17):
Yes, absolutely. So Expect Fit is the website. So instead of.com, it's FIT short for Fitness, and they can email me directly DARA at Expect Fit. Mark Cuban gives out his email. I might as well too, right? We
Host, David S. Williams III (15:36):
Do too. Here on the Treat right podcast. Right,
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (15:38):
Exactly right. DARA at Expect Fit, and that's how to find more about us.
Host, David S. Williams III (15:46):
That's great. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Treat Us Right podcast. We are going to keep watching. Expect and hope you can come back and give us an update here later on.
Dara Cook, CEO Expect (15:58):
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dave. Thank you. All right.
Host, David S. Williams III (16:05):
You might wonder how we can follow that up with something equally as amazing, but at Treat us right. We keep bringing it for you. Next up is Lyo George, founder and CEO of OMI I. And we're back. Treat us right listeners, David Williams here, and we have another incredible guest. Tell the Treat us right audience, who you are and about your company.
Layo George, CEO Wolomi (16:35):
Hi everyone. My name is Layo George. I'm the founder of Wolomi, W-O-L-O-M-I. Wolomi is a digital platform made for women of color who feel alone and scared on their pregnancy and motherhood journey. We provide them with cultural compass and experts, community and evidence-based support on their pregnancy and motherhood journey for better outcome and joy.
Host, David S. Williams III (16:59):
Oh, that is wonderful. So the question I was going to ask you is how are you promoting health equity? But it sounds like you're doing that every single day. What are some of the things that you have found that you've been able to do in helping your mothers?
Layo George, CEO Wolomi (17:14):
So just creating a safe space for moms. Oftentimes there's this mistrust between the healthcare system and the moms just really feeling scared and alone and feeling that they cannot trust the kind of care that they're given or they're not being listened to on their pregnancy journey. And so creating that space where we say it's okay to say what needs to be said, oftentimes maternal mental health, health is one of the highest costs of Matana death in the country. And so creating that space where moms can let go and also be in the midst of experts, matana mental health experts, and even get some of their questions answered, that has to do with navigating the healthcare system has been just amazing in a community, in group support. And that has been just something that's been a breakthrough for us.
Host, David S. Williams III (18:12):
Oh, that is amazing. And you are speaking to the choir here because the Treat Us Right Podcast is literally about how do we get treated right by the healthcare system. All of this sounds great, but what challenges are you facing and how are you working to overcome them?
Layo George, CEO Wolomi (18:29):
Well, trying to find more health plans that we can work with can be very challenging. We want to leave the world better than we found it for moms and for kids. When moms are having good outcomes and joy on their journey, then the family thrives. Getting more introductions and really closing the deals. A lot of the health plan is something that it's a little challenging, but how are we trying to mitigate that? We continue to show by the outcomes, by the data, continue to learn the language that they speak and trying to make sure that we are speaking that language back to them. Even though as a nurse, as somebody with a nursing background and a little bit in the labor background, I lead with the heart. So just trying to overcome that and making sure that we're signing the right kind of checks so that we can support more moms.
Host, David S. Williams III (19:28):
Storytelling though, is still important in pitching. And so the more that you do that, you will make those human connections, even with these health plans that are supposed to be helping people, but oftentimes they're getting sued for not paying claims and things like that. You're doing the right things. So keep doing those. One of the things that I also wanted to ask you is, is your service right now geographically based or are you nationally based?
Layo George, CEO Wolomi (19:55):
So moms can go on that platform and there's some free service that moms can access, so that's national. But as far as where we are with the health plans, so we are in Florida, Georgia, and the District of Columbia.
Host, David S. Williams III (20:11):
Oh, those are great markets to be in too to start. So congratulations on your success so far. We want you to get larger and larger in any way. We can help you here in Treat Us Right. We want to do so how can people learn more about your company and contact you?
Layo George, CEO Wolomi (20:27):
Yeah, so definitely you can find us on Instagram at @wolomiapp. So that's W-O-L-O-M-I app, A PP. Or you can email us at hello@wolomi.com.
Host, David S. Williams III (20:42):
Wonderful. And we'll put all of this information here on our website as thank you so much for coming onto the Treat Us Right podcast. I can't wait to hear more about your success going forward. Thank you so much for having me. Alright, take care now. Alright, now you see why I was so excited for this episode. Please check out, expect and Wall Me spread the word to others. We are all in this together, so the healthcare system will treat us right. Stay tuned for our next episode, another in the Vibe series. If you love Treat Us right, give us that five star rating. Take care.