Keep Going: Building a System That Supports Mothers
About this episode
The episode discusses the challenges in the American healthcare system regarding maternal and infant health, featuring insights from Melissa Hanna of Mahmee.
The American healthcare system is full of software. It is not always full of care. That was one of the clearest lessons from my conversation with Melissa Hanna , the co-founder and CEO of Mahmee , a company that provides prenatal and postpartum support through doulas, lactation consultants, nurses, mental health providers, and nutritionists. The services are bundled together and, in many cases, covered by insurance. The support begins during pregnancy and continues through a child’s first year. At first glance, Mahmee sounds like a healthcare startup built around coordination. In one sense it is. But Hanna’s story is really about something harder. She started with the belief, common in startups, that a broken system could be fixed by better software. Over time she found that software mattered, but it was not the thing standing in the way. The original problem that pulled her in was simple and disturbing. The United States has some of the worst maternal and infant health outcomes in the developed world. For Black women, the numbers are far worse. Hanna said Black women face maternal mortality rates three to four times higher than peers with similar clinical and economic profiles…
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