Ten Startups Selected for Village Capital’s Innovations in Health Equity Accelerator

Washington, D.C., (July 25, 2022) – Village Capital, in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, an investment fund of the Johnson & Johnson Foundation, announced that 10 startups were selected to take part in Innovations in Health Equity, an accelerator program for early-stage startups reducing health disparities for people of color in the US.

The program, Innovations in Health Equity, will run with support from the California Health Care Foundation’s Innovation Fund. The open call had a focus on startup innovations that are working to reduce health inequities for minority groups in the US, for both patients and professionals. 

Ninety startups from over 25 states applied to be a part of the accelerator. The final cohort is composed of the top 10 companies, with 70% of the cohort headquartered outside of US tech hubs (NY, CA, MA) and 80% led by a BIPOC founder and/or CEO. These companies are creating solutions around access to healthcare delivery and services; quality of healthcare; and efficiency, effectiveness, and wellbeing of frontline healthcare workers.

Here are the 10 startups working to build a more equitable healthcare system in the US:

• Akenta Health (Santa Monica, CA) is a fully bilingual (in English and Spanish) digital health clinic specialized in cardiovascular disease prevention.
• Canopie (Washington, D.C.) addresses and improves new mothers’ mental health conditions by customizing evidence-based programs through their mobile platform.
• CliniSpan Health (Durham, NC) operates a software platform that increases BIPOC patients’ access to clinical trials.
• Grapefruit Health (Chicago, IL) addresses the massive workforce shortage in healthcare by creating a net-positive, semi-clinical workforce composed of clinical students to perform interactions with patients remotely.
• InovCares (Silver Spring, MD) is a digital platform that addresses inequities in healthcare access and delivery for women of color through telehealth services, point-of-care testing (POCT), and referrals to virtual obstetrics and gynecology (OB-GYN) clinics.
• Scripted (Chicago, IL) is the first marketplace that connects patients in need of non-urgent care for common conditions with an in-person local pharmacy provider. 
• SpeechMED (Miami, FL) offers an award-winning voice and language platform designed and built for immigrant households, the elderly, and socioeconomically vulnerable populations to track, understand, and monitor their health.
• Stellation Care (New Haven, CT) operates an analytics platform that helps healthcare organizations understand which providers perform best for which patients—empowering individuals to see personalized providers and benefit from improved outcomes and lower costs. 
• Strong Children Wellness (Queens, NY) is a healthcare network for marginalized communities that embeds comprehensive medical care into trusted community organizations to deliver technology-enabled primary care, mental health, and social care to children and families with medical, behavioral, and social complexity.
• Yumlish (Dallas, TX) operates a comprehensive platform providing nutrition therapy for people with chronic conditions, like diabetes and heart disease, using a whole-person approach that considers cultural heritage, socioeconomic factors, and lifestyle—cutting healthcare costs for employers and reducing readmissions for health systems.

From July to October 2022, selected startups will participate in virtual workshops on improving investment-readiness. Each company will have the opportunity to work closely with industry experts, investors, and ecosystem-building partners to develop the networks they need to scale their impact. The top four peer-selected companies will receive USD$50,000 each in grant funding.

All startups in the program will be invited to join Abaca, Village Capital’s global online network that helps entrepreneurs analyze and structure their businesses for investment. The network also matches them with the right investors and resources.

For more information, reach out to Sofía Cándano at Village Capital (sofia.candano@vilcap.com).

About Village Capital

Village Capital helps entrepreneurs bring big ideas from vision to scale. Our mission is to reinvent the system to back the entrepreneurs of the future. Our vision is a future where business creates equity and long-term prosperity. Since 2009, we have supported more than 1,000 early-stage entrepreneurs through our investment readiness programs. Our affiliated fund, VilCap Investments, has invested in more than 110 program graduates.