Birth By Us Secures $40,000 Funding for Black Maternal Health

Birth By Us, a maternal health platform, recently received $40,000 in unrestricted financing as a recipient of the renowned 2024 Westly Prize for Young Social Innovators, marking a crucial step toward tackling the severe inequities in maternity healthcare outcomes for Black women.

Birth By Us, founded in 2021 by UC Berkeley alum Ijeoma Uche and MIT pre-med student Mercy Oladipo, seeks to transform maternal health experiences for Black moms, who frequently face the most adverse outcomes and experiences throughout pregnancy and postpartum care.

The Westly Foundation, which created the prize, focuses on giving financial possibilities that expand education, increase healthcare access, and promote children's growth and well-being. This considerable investment is intended to fuel Birth By Us' attempts to reshape the maternal healthcare sector.

Uche expressed her thanks for the assistance and underlined the difficulties in obtaining money for initiatives such as Birth By Us, noting, "It's harder to get the funding it needs to progress as fast as other companies."

Birth By Us helps moms prepare for medical appointments from prenatal to one year postpartum, with a full suite of services that includes a resource directory, daily wellness checks, and health insights. The app enables women of colour to personalize their birthing experiences while also offering valuable feedback to healthcare practitioners and institutional systems.

With an eye to the future, Uche and Oladipo intend to use the funds to increase their influence by extending their staff. This involves the inclusion of medical, biostatistical, and technical advisers, as well as product design and full-stack engineering interns.

The founders are confident that the additional cash would help them expedite their aim to improve maternal healthcare outcomes for Black women. According to Uche, the cash would allow the Birth By Us team to "make the impact that we want to make as fast as we anticipate."