The Coyote Fireside Chats resumed last week with Jenica Patterson, the lead for the Sprint for Women’s Health Initiative and Director of the Project Accelerator Transition Innovation Office at ARPA-H.

The first Coyote Fireside Chat of the new year was a panel that discussed “Partnering with Healthcare Providers,” presented by experts Michelle de Haaff, assistant director at Stanford Biodesign and former VP at Glooko, and Noel Pugh, CEO and co-founder of e-Lovu. Nina Joshi, a Coyote Venture Fellow and Senior Consultant at Kaiser Permanente’s Innovation Studio, moderated this event.

Why We Invested: Sunfish

Coyote Fireside Chats continued with a panel discussing “Selling Benefits to Employers.” We were grateful to be joined by Cara McCarty Abbott, CEO/Co-Founder of Betterleave (a Coyote portfolio company) and former VP of People, and Coyote Ventures’ Venture Partner Corina Leu, who is also a Strategy Consultant at Mercer. Melody Qiu, Coyote Venture Partner and VP at Progyny, moderated the event.

We recently hosted a panel that discussed how to partner with healthcare payer systems, featuring Mika Eddy (CEO of our portfolio company Malama Health, and a former Director at UnitedHealth Group), Michael Ellis (VP of Corporate Strategy at Blue Shield of CA) and moderated by Laura Finney (Coyote Venture Fellow and Senior Manager at Oscar Health). The views expressed in this blog post are topics discussed between the individuals who participated, and do not represent the views of the organizations they represent.

Betterleave aims to transform the bereavement care space with a differentiated, integrated approach to grief and mental health. Bereavement care is a growing category of employee benefits that enables modern employers to connect with and support their employees through the difficult and complex grieving process. Betterleave’s platform brings together industry-leading partners from death care, insurance, health systems and hospices, and mental health networks to provide grieving individuals with personalized administrative and counseling services. It is the first comprehensive digital and clinical care platform to deliver a full spectrum of bereavement care support, including end-of-life planning, access to licensed therapists and community groups, and post-loss programs.

The health of birthing people in the US is inadequate, especially when compared to other well-resourced countries. Unfortunately, communities that have been marginalized throughout our country’s history are still experiencing disproportionately negative health outcomes to this day, including within maternal health.

Coyote Fireside Chats is a new ongoing series of casual, informational sessions intended to provide founders and aspiring founders practical lessons for navigating the digital health and venture capital landscapes. We hosted the first of this series on October 18th, discussing “Raising a Seed Round from VCs.” It was led by Jessica Karr, General Partner at Coyote Ventures, and Jess Guenzl, Investment Committee member at Coyote Ventures and Investor at 137 Ventures. Charu Sharma, also on Coyote’s Investment Committee and a two-time VC-backed founder, moderated the virtual event.

The US maternal mortality rate is currently over ten times that of other high income countries with 32.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021. In addition, the US struggles with high levels of maternal morbidity, defined by the WHO as “any health condition attributed to and/or complicating pregnancy and childbirth that has a negative impact on the woman’s wellbeing and/or functioning.” It is estimated that for each maternal death, up to 30 birthing people will experience maternal morbidity. Pregnancy in the US does not come without its risks.

Perinatal mental health (PMH) is a term used to describe any mental health condition that occurs within a 2-year time frame from conception, through pregnancy and childbirth, and up until the child’s first birthday. This includes symptoms like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, substance use, and psychosis, along with pre-existing mental health conditions and mental health condition relapses during pregnancy.

Meet The Bean. The Beans is a platform designed to automate the finances of America’s caring professionals, who are disproportionately women. The 40M frontline employees represent the largest and fastest growing segment of the U.S. economy, and financial stress remains the top reason for these workers vacating their jobs.

We stand at a critical tipping point of the climate crisis. The planet has already warmed by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the industrial boom of the 19th century and scientists forecast a rise of 2.7F, potentially by 2030. The impact of this is evident all around us: with melting ice caps, rising sea levels, rising temperatures and more extreme weather events. The recent Hurricane Ian that hit Florida is reported to have contained 10% more water due to climate change, resulting in more rain and severe flooding. Left unchecked, the climate crisis threatens our security and survival on this planet.

To date, Bank of America is the largest institutional investor in our Fund I and follows previous investments from The Case for Her and Tripple Family Office.

For many of us, September is a time of both renewal and closing in. Children are back at school after the summer break, adults are returning to work after the summer vacations, and there is a renewed drive to get things done before the end of the year. At the same time, in the northern hemisphere, the night’s drawing in, days turn colder and wetter, and we start to settle in for the winter ahead. It seems fitting then – in the spirit of both renewal and closing in – that the UN Equal Pay Day is held on September 18th. Although several countries have observed such days for some years, the UN only instated this day in 2020. Intended to draw attention to the gender pay gap, Equal Pay Day helps pace ourselves for the long battle ahead and renew efforts to fight the gender pay and wealth gap.

In a landmark ruling, the United States Supreme Court has just voted to overturn Roe v Wade, ending the constitutional protections to abortion across the nation. This decision has been anticipated after a draft decision was leaked in early May suggesting the Supreme Court was preparing to overturn the 1973 precedent. This follows years of growing tension among pro-choice activists and allies as abortion access has been chipped away. Recent appointments to the Supreme Court by the Trump administration have pulled the balance of the court to the extreme right, despite statements from all three justices in question during their confirmation hearings saying they would recognize the precedent. In doing so, the United States becomes one of only four countries worldwide to remove legal abortion protections in more than 25 years.

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