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Tennis superstar Venus Williams’ legacy has empowered women both on and off the court. According to a press release, Williams is teaming up with Blue Shield of California — a mission-driven nonprofit health plan — to spread awareness of healthcare bias. “For groups, including but not limited to, women, people of color, immigrants, and low-income populations, accessing and receiving the care they need and deserve can be challenging,” Jeff Robertson , senior vice president of consumer growth and chief marketing officer at Blue Shield of California, said in a press release . “We are proud to be working with tennis icon and activist Venus Williams in addressing the implicit biases and systemic inequities that persist in health care today.” Over the next year, through the collaborative campaign — “Hear Me” — Williams will speak on “her auto-immune disorder Sjogren’s Syndrome, mental health, Black maternal health, and fitness and wellness,” the press release announced. “I am deeply...
The African population offers greater genomic diversity in comparison to any other people group in the world, according to Science. Despite this, most genetic research is conducted in European countries, raising concerns for the integrity of medical research. This is why Nigerian-based startup 54gene is combatting the discrepancies in genomic research through its health technologies. The advancements will provide medical discoveries for the African population and the diaspora. To date, the genomic startup founded by Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong has collected over 300,000 genomic samples. The companies efforts will expand its medical discoveries thanks to $25 million raised in a Series B funding round, a press release states. The round was led by capital firm Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund and included Plexo Capital, KdT Ventures, Ingressive Capital, Adjuvant Capital, Endeavor Capital and more. The company’s promising impact on the future of drug and health research is drawing in...
Black woman-owned healthcare startup HUED is getting plenty of community support to bet on its revolutionary mission in the health industry. According to CNBC Make It, HUED — a company that aims to diversify patient-physician experiences with culturally competent providers — has announced the raise of $1.6 million in seed funding that will be used to help address the racial disparities in health plaguing communities of color. Among its investors includes Serena Williams’ venture capital fund Serena Ventures, Black Founders Matter, Female Founders Fund, Osage Venture Partners, Northwestern Mutual, Gingerbread Capital, angel investor and health industry leader, Halle Tecco and others. The idea behind the digital health company — which was founded by ESSENCE senior editor Kimberly Wilson in 2018 — was inspired by Wilson’s own personal experience with the healthcare system after she received an improper fibroid diagnosis in 2017, CNBC Make It reports. With issues of bias and...
Live Nation wants the artists to have a choice. In a statement released by the company’s CEO — and obtained by Revolt TV — it was revealed that the concert promoter is leaving the onus on the artists, themselves, to issue a vaccine mandate at their concerts. “It has been great to see events make such a strong return across the U.S., with demand for concerts and festivals continuing to outpace expectations,” wrote CEO Michael Rapino, in the announcement. “We are working to ensure we are reopening in the best way possible for staff, artists, crew, fans, and communities at large. Our teams have worked together to put new processes in place so artists doing shows with Live Nation in the U.S. can require all attendees and staff to be fully vaccinated or show a negative test result for entry where permitted by law. We know people are eager to return to live events, and we hope these measures encourage even more people to get vaccinated. That is the number one thing anyone can do to take...
Raniyah Copeland of the Black AIDS Institute can remember a time when HIV — the virus that causes AIDS — was the scourge of the 1980s. She remembers when the virus wiped out a whole sub-population of Black and Latinx men — she remembers what they faced while they were alive — and she knows that while HIV isn’t the scourge it once was, it’s still a disease that disproportionately affects the Black community…and she knows why. “In the United States, health is driven by inequity,” she told AfroTech. “HIV, as a disease, has a unique stigma in that it’s associated specifically with certain sexuality, a certain race, and a certain socio-economic class. While society isn’t as overt with its racism about AIDS as it once was — there was a time when the CDC would say that being Haitian, for example, made you more susceptible to AIDS — we still have progress that needs to be made.” Progress is, ultimately, the goal of the Black AIDS Institute. Dedicated exclusively to eradicating the disease...
Though the concept of telehealth became wildly popular amid the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual health services have been around for years to give patients easy access to their healthcare providers online. While these services are available to all, patients in Black and communities of color still struggle to get the proper medical care they need without leaving their homes. According to a study conducted by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association last year, their data showed that Black people were more likely to self-report telehealth use in response to the pandemic than white people. However, the systemic racism that exists within the healthcare system still makes it difficult for Black and people of color to acquire telehealth tools. This issue is partly what motivated the creation of Certintell — a care management company that enables safety-net providers to make a lasting impact on the health of underserved patients through telehealth. As the only solo-founded...
Kidato, an online school designed to address the school overcrowding issue in Africa, has just announced its latest round of funding. According to TechCrunch, the company has announced that it has raised a $1.4 million seed round to expand its educational efforts. Learn Start Capital, Launch Africa Ventures Fund, Graph Ventures, and Century Oak Capital were the companies that led the investment. The company also reports that there were other private and angel investors involved in this latest round of funding. Kidato was founded by Sam Gichuru, a Kenyan serial entrepreneur, back in 2020. A father of three children, Gichuru says that he was inspired to found the company when he realized that there were several Kenyan professionals — like himself — who were struggling to keep up with the cost of private school tuition which can go as high as $8,000 a year, according to TechCrunch. “I moved them from private schools to homeschooling because that was the next option to give them the...
Dr. Patrice Little is here to let aspiring nurse practitioners know that there’s a new program available to help them achieve their goals. Little has launched NP Student University, an educational platform designed to help current nursing students and new graduates better navigate their education and fill critical educational gaps. It also serves as a professional social network of sorts, connecting doctoral students in the profession with other professional nurse practitioners so they can get real-time and hands-on experience in their chosen field. One of the reasons that Dr. Little launched NP Student University was because she was attempting to address the ever-widening educational gap between nurse practitioners. And this widening gap became even more evident — perhaps unsurprisingly — during the COVID-19 pandemic. “As a graduate of a hybrid program, there are many concerns in NP education that need to be addressed for one becoming a provider solely online during a pandemic,”...
Dr. Kanika Bowen-Jallow has made history by becoming the ninth-ever female Black pediatric surgeon in the United States. And while this feat is impressive, it is also further proof of the disparity between Black health and the presence of Black doctors. According to ABC 8 Dallas, Dr. Bowen-Jallow is a Black pediatric surgeon at the Cook Children’s new hospital in Prosper, Texas. Bowen-Jallow, who said she was inspired to become a doctor from the day she got the board game “Operation” as a gift, said that while she was fortunate to come from the background she came from, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted, for her, how few Black doctors there are in the medical field — as well as the disparities between the races in health education. “When I got my COVID vaccine I took a video of it, and I sent it out to my friends and family because I had been getting is it safe? Is it OK? Are you going to take it?” she told the ABC affiliate. “It shouldn’t be that you get to college before you...
Healthcare professionals deserve their flowers now more than ever, especially this group of Black doctors. Last Spring, ER and trauma physicians Reuben C. Rutland, Airron Richardson, Michael A. McGee, and Gregory Primus united to open the first Black-owned urgent care facility in Chicago. Premier Health Urgent Care is located in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood, an urban community that can benefit immensely from local and affordable health resources. Relief for the Southside “We live in the neighborhood and recognize when our children were injured or sick there was no urgent care nearby,” Dr. Richardson told ABC7 . “You had to go to a completely different neighborhood several miles away.” This group of co-founders developed the idea for Premier due to the healthcare gap in the area. As a result, they offer proper care and support to those in need, as well as alleviate the growing strain on neighboring healthcare centers. The facility not only provides urgent physical care but also...