Women’s and Family Health is Center Stage at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

Every year, J.P. Morgan convenes some of the leading minds in healthcare — from global industry leaders to innovative technology creators and members of the investment community — to discuss the trends shaping our industry. Maven Founder and CEO Kate Ryder presented to J.P. Morgan’s audience of 8,000 participants about why the standard of care in fertility, maternity, and parenting & pediatrics is ripe for innovation—and why Maven is the company to deliver it.

In a year that has marked the conclusive arrival of digital health, and exposed the need for reform across the healthcare system, Kate proposed a framework for driving change: focusing on one specific health care moment—the start of life, and the start of the family—a moment that holds the potential to create cascading positive outcomes and cost savings throughout the entire healthcare system. ‍

“I would contend that one of the most powerful levers we have is to improve care at life’s most critical healthcare moment: the beginning of life, and the beginning of the family.”

The case for investing in life’s most critical healthcare moment: the start of life, and the start of a family:

1. It carries impact throughout life. It’s intuitive that healthy conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and early childhood lead to positive health and financial outcomes for years to come. Investment in the first 1,000 days alone, from conception through early childhood, has shown a massive ROI in terms of downstream cost savings.
2. It’s expensive. The start of a family is a really expensive healthcare moment, and there is a lot of money at stake. For most employers or health plans, maternity is the #1 or #2 healthcare expense. What’s more, some of the biggest cost drivers, particularly in maternity care, are clearly reducible. These include premature births and subsequent NICU spend, as well as C-Section rates—both of which are higher in the US than in any other developed country.
3. It’s an opportunity to build trust with the most critical consumer in healthcare—women. Women make 80% of healthcare decisions, making them the natural fulcrum for improving family health. . The beginning of a family is a magical time, but it’s also a vulnerable one. Being there for a consumer at this time has outsized impact on trust, and on engagement down the line across many other life stages and the subsequent healthcare needs they bring. 
   

Despite spending $115 billion annually on maternity, our system has chronically under-delivered on this specific moment of care—failing consumers, and failing its own business model. Meanwhile, employers bear the burden of this failure: 43% of new moms drop out of the workforce, when 75% say they didn’t want to. The people cost is enormous, particularly at a time when ensuring diverse and female leadership has emerged as a critical business priority. A sector of healthcare that was already ripe with patient need and commercial opportunity has now reached its inflection point where change is no longer optional.

Maven has been pioneering this change since 2014. We’re fundamentally rebuilding the patient journey—across every aspect of this healthcare moment, from Fertility to Maternity and extending through Parenting and Pediatrics—to give employers and health plans a platform to improve outcomes and reduce costs. Over the past seven years, we’ve seen that covering this healthcare moment end-to-end is essential to meaningfully improve outcomes and give women and families the healthcare they deserve.

As the pandemic wears on and the challenges women and families face intensify— massive job loss, strains on mental health, increased burnout, and more—our work to improve life’s most critical healthcare moment has never felt more important. We’re entering the year with a tremendous amount of momentum around this work — 150+ clients, 8 million users served to date across our enterprise and consumer products, an incredible provider network spanning 25 different types of specialties and over 350 sub-specialties, and a talented team of 160+ individuals with a commitment to changing the health of the world — one woman, one family at a time. We hope you’ll join us on this journey.