Having spent the bulk of my career as a clinical social worker in nonprofit and public health settings, I was accustomed to the populations I served being the last to benefit from healthcare technology -- if they benefitted at all. So when my first few weeks at Omada involved a lot of my colleagues asking “what is the safety net in healthcare?” I wasn’t too surprised.
What was exciting, however, was joining a health technology company committed to not only educating employees about how the safety net provides necessary care to those most in need - low-income, Medicaid, and uninsured populations, but also to designing patient-informed solutions for that exact population.
Over three years ago, Omada committed ourselves to developing a low-literacy, bilingual version of our program with a culturally sensitive curriculum, low-budget recipe suggestions, and health coaches specially trained and experienced in working with safety net populations. Then, as we’ve done with our program since the early days, we ran a peer-reviewed study to test the adapted program’s feasibility. The goal of that study was to better inform our design of the program by hearing directly from the people who would be using it. Once that was established, we sought out opportunities to deliver our program to underserved populations.
In 2016, we began working with community health clinics and public health programs in California, Minnesota, and Nebraska, and launched a clinical trial to demonstrate just how effective our adapted program could be. That summer, our efforts adapting and implementing our program for underserved participants were featured on STAT News and CNN Health. Results from the trial will be released later this year. When the results from our study are released, we feel confident we’ll answer the headline question on STAT -- “Can a digital health startup prevent diabetes in Medicaid patients?” -- definitively.
Walking into Omada’s headquarters, it’s impossible to miss our company mission painted on the wall: We inspire and enable people everywhere to live free of chronic disease.
Too often for companies, “people everywhere” often excludes the people who need that help, or that innovation, the most. I love getting to tell the world how we deliver on our mission and are working, step-by-step, to integrate digital health into safety net healthcare.