US fertility education platform to support women in underserved communities

A US reproductive health and fertility education platform has expanded into three Southeastern states to support underserved patient populations.

Wingwomen will widen access to emotional and nutritional support, virtual doula services, lifestyle, nutrition health coaching, reproductive health and fertility education to medically underrepresented women in Florida, Georgia and Louisiana.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), less than one-half of women in rural or exceptionally underserved areas in the US live within a 30-minute drive to the nearest hospital offering perinatal services.

Nearly one in five rural women of reproductive age reported the highest rates of delayed care or no medical care due to cost, with 23 per cent reporting no health insurance coverage.

“When we looked at the data, we realised we could deepen our impact by strategically including women who are most commonly overlooked by other telehealth market solutions,” says Adonica Shaw, Wingwomen founder and CEO.

“Millions of women are falling through the cracks because they either do not have insurance, live in a care desert or rural area, or in some cases, because they fall into the Medicaid patient population.

“It was important to make sure we carved a path that was inclusive of women regardless of their socioeconomic status.”

This strategic move, the founder says, will provide an equitable solution for women in the South who are more likely to be impacted by health disparities, including lack of access to community support, reproductive and sexual health education, ethnic, religious, and racial bias by practitioners, and lack of consistent health coverage throughout a woman’s entire reproductive health life cycle.

The announcement comes weeks after Wingwomen launched a series of reproductive health literacy programmes to support Gen Z and millennial women.

The programmes, introduced in February, feature a curriculum for preconception and postnatal health for women including those with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, Hashimoto’s, diabetes, preeclampsia, advanced maternal age, sickle cell disease, as well as perimenopause.