Malama Health, a doula-led maternal care provider focused on Medicaid, has closed a $9.2 million seed round.
The oversubscribed round was led by Acumen America, a VC firm focused on health and economic justice, with participation from Wisdom Ventures, Capital F, Coyote Ventures and angel investors. It includes a $2.3 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant and more than $1 million in California state funding.
Malama will use the capital to expand to more Medicaid markets, grow its doula workforce and deepen community health center partnerships. The NIH grant will be used to study how women with high-risk clinical conditions can proactively manage gestational and Type 2 diabetes.
Malama, which means “to nurture” in Hawaiian, was built to address inequities and high-risk pregnancies by shifting from episodic to continuous care. It leverages remote patient monitoring, chronic disease management and care navigation to support women from pregnancy through the postpartum year, addressing clinical and social needs.
"Health equity in maternal care requires trust,” Veenu Aulakh, executive director at Acumen America, said in an announcement. “Malama Health has earned that trust in communities that have been failed by the healthcare system for generations, and the outcomes data shows what's possible when you build care around women rather than around appointments.”
Malama is in-network with Medicaid plans in California, Texas and Colorado, getting reimbursed through per-member-per-month payments with quality incentives tied to care gap closures, like depression screening, and outcomes. Malama is not yet taking on full downside risk but plans to move toward deeper value-based care as it gathers more outcomes data. Medicaid is the largest single payer of pregnancy-related services, according to KFF, covering 4 in 10 births.
“Malama was founded out of personal and lived experience. We exist to help moms and babies thrive,” Mika Eddy, co-founder and CEO of Malama, told Fierce Healthcare in an advance interview. “The way that we do that is really through building community.”
For covered plans, Malama doulas are embedded within communities and can attend births, conduct home or virtual visits and connect moms to social services like medically tailored meals, transport to doctor visits and child care. Many moms don’t realize these options may be covered by their plan, per Eddy.
“They know that pregnancy can be filled with fear and uncertainty," Eddy said, adding she knew "in order to really move the needle on clinical outcomes, we had to address the social determinants as well."
Doulas go through Malama’s internal training program focused on quality and are overseen by a multidisciplinary clinical leadership team that includes obstetricians, licensed clinical social workers and other clinical consultants. Malama’s medical director is double board-certified in obesity and maternal medicine.
Additionally, Malama has a free app with users in every U.S. state and in more than 20 countries. It features educational content written at a fifth-grade literacy level in several languages. In the app, moms can track their health data—including from wearables, nutrition logs, symptoms and social determinants—and share them with their care team. Users can also access culturally competent nutritional guidance in the app and engage with Malama’s postpartum wellness program, which is based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Diabetes Prevention Program and tailored for postpartum.
Partnerships are a core part of Malama’s model. The company primarily works with community health centers and federally qualified health centers (FQHCs). These clinics can refer eligible patients to Malama’s services. (The app is free regardless of coverage.) FQHCs can also leverage Malama’s remote monitoring and care coordination platform at no cost to help patients track biometrics and connect them to social services and other resources.
The platform tracks real-time patient biometrics because Malama syncs with a number of approved monitors and consumer wearables. It integrates with several EHRs, including Epic, and a web-based version of the portal is also being built. Importantly, the platform closes the loop on what social services women received.
“That’s a core piece that’s missing from the infrastructure today,” Eddy noted.
Patient-reported outcomes data from more than 2,300 Malama patients show a 19% decrease in NICU admissions, a 13% decrease in caesarean section rates and a 45% decrease in preterm birth rates. The data also show a 40% difference in postpartum diabetes outcomes compared to standard care. A randomized controlled trial conducted at Tufts Medical Center found women who used Malama in pregnancy were significantly less likely to develop diabetes at delivery compared to standard care.
The company is leaning into an artificial intelligence copilot internally, including to suggest topic check-ins and prompts for doulas. Malama also offers ambient listening and documentation support that generates written notes from visits. And Malama uses AI for internal resource-matching to help connect members with relevant services.
Malama’s app has been used by more than 45,000 women across all 50 states. The company has touched over 600 clinics and hospitals, primarily through app users sharing data with their providers, though also through occasional inbound patient referrals.
“We were very careful to really raise from impact investors," Eddy said. "Our impact investors are most excited about our postpartum wellness program … as well as really offering that continuous support between appointments, and that we’re community-based."