Women's Wellness

Limited health literacy among females aged 12-50 in the MENA region which is associated with a higher risk of complications and inefficient health expenditure and utilization.

• Scarcity of Arabic health education resources that are reliable, comprehensive, trauma-informed, and culturally sensitive.

• Absence of personal health tools such as fertility awareness/advanced menstrual cycle charting for personalized care.

• Lack of a safe community where women can communicate with others who can relate to their health challenges, complemented by professional guidance.

• The combination of these challenges leads to lower quality of life, higher risk of complications, and inefficient health expenditure, both out-of-pocket and through insurance.

Current approaches involve accessing fragmented, incomplete, and often unreliable health information from search engines or social media platforms, or resorting to impromptu and unnecessary visits to outpatient clinics to seek advice and reassurance from healthcare professionals. However, due to time constraints and the limited number of visits, these consultations often fail to provide the necessary guidance. Additionally, the associated costs and time commitments contribute to the burden of both sides, by increasing related costs for the women on one side, while also further straining healthcare providers and diverting resources that could have been allocated to crucial medical interventions.

A digital health literacy platform designed to empower women aged 12-50 in MENA, equipped with a multitude of features that aim to bridge the gap in health awareness. Our platform offers self-paced courses led by certified medical professionals, ensuring that our users receive accurate, reliable, and easy-to-understand information, and covering crucial topics like reproductive health, family planning, mental health, chronic illnesses, general wellness and more. We foster a supportive community through peer groups guided by professionals. In addition to conducting epidemiological research on women’s health literacy interventions.

• The solution is directed to Arabic speaking women of reproductive age between 12-50 years old, in the MENA region. Generally belonging to the middle to upper middle class, with  higher education degrees. 

• Improved quality of life, improved clinical and psychosocial outcomes in various stages of women’s lives. Ability to make informed health choices according to their unique and changing physical and psychological needs, abilities and context.

• The founder has a long and deep experience in women's health literacy with clear vision and insights about what women need in our region, and tools for strong market and outcomes evaluation research. She is a medical graduate holding masters degree in global health sciences at the University of Oxford, childbirth educator, lactation consultant, accredited fertility awareness teacher, and has been working in the field of health literacy for 15 years and in women’s health literacy for 8 years. 

• The team so far is composed of women who are passionate about women’s health, with various age groups in 20s and 30s, single, married and young mothers, who are relevant for the current stage.

• Entrepreneur in residence has operational background in startups and VC, with a strong skill set for research and development. 

• We are expanding the team to include a business development specialist and a marketing specialist to increase our outreach in b2b and b2c respectively. 

• We constantly collect feedback from our customers through 1:1 interaction and focus groups, and try to make the services relevant to their need such as changes in the courses content or the learning design, same with the peers support groups. We have found that flexibility is crucial and also it delivers a sense of caring to the customers. 

approximately 250 paying customers

The multifaceted approach in addressing the complex health challenges faced by women in the MENA region. Several key factors contribute to its innovative nature:

1. Digital health literacy platform with learning design focus and developing evidence on effectiveness of our interventions on clinical and psychosocial outcomes in addition to cost effectiveness.

2. Complementing self paced courses with online peers support sessions that are facilitated by mental health professionals to support women in exploring psychological and societal barriers to informed health choices.

3. Covering all women’s health topics including sexual and reproductive health in one place with the same world class quality of content, learning design and journey.

1. Developing courses that accompany women from adolescence through adulthood about puberty, the menstrual cycle, contraception, preconception, and all the way through pregnancy and the perinatal stages.

   1.  Next year: 

      1. Launching 4 new courses. 
         

      2. Organizing 5 online peers support groups for maternal health for 100 women.  

      3. 1000 paying customers in b2c
         

      4. Five customers in b2b, where we are beginning to introduce the concept that corporations offer our services as benefits to their employees for their wellbeing and return on investment for the company.

      5. Publishing a research paper on digital maternal health literacy interventions.

   2. Next five years: 

      1. Expanding the library of our courses to contain 20 courses. 

      2. Organizing peers support groups for 5 women’s health topics, 4 groups for each topic, for 400 women. 

      3. Publishing 4 research papers on digital women’s health literacy interventions and peers support groups. 

      4. 10000 paying customers in b2c.

      5. 25 customers in b2b where we normalized offering our services as benefits to employees. 

      6. Partnerships with NGOs to offer our courses to underserved communities. 

      7. Reaching sustainable profitability.

   3. Building a research and development team and creating scientific partnerships to develop a framework for designing and developing self paced courses for women’s health literacy with an approach that is comprehensive, evidence based, trauma informed, and culturally sensitive. The framework takes into consideration learning design approaches for accessibility, and also pools clinical info from credible medical resources, scientific partnerships and subject matter experts, and curates it to present to the customers a comprehensive resource to allow for informed health choices. 

   4. Building scientific and business partnerships. 

2. Developing scientific research about the effectiveness of our health literacy interventions (e.g. self paced courses about prenatal and postpartum education, self-paced courses about menstrual cycle and fertility awareness), and on peer support groups for women’s health specifically for perinatal stage, subfertility/infertility, and menstrual irregularities. 

   1. Integrating pre and post-assessments in user journey within a framework for research on women’s health literacy interventions.

3. Peer support groups for various topics of women’s health, that are run on a regular basis.

We believe that by providing accurate and comprehensive information in an easily accessible format, we can empower women to make informed decisions about their health, thus improving their quality of life, reducing the risks of complications and inefficient health spending.

Producing scientific evidence on the effectiveness of digital women’s health literacy interventions would increase its uptake within the general population, the medical community, and employers. 

Additionally, our model fosters a collaborative environment, catering to various entities through our business-to-business and non-profit partnerships. By engaging with schools, universities, health apps, insurance companies, and various other organizations, we aim to enhance the overall quality of life for women in the region while also reducing healthcare costs for these institutions.

Full-Time Employees: 2

Part-Time: 3

Contractors: 3

One and half years.

• An example of diversity, equity and inclusion within our team is including team members of various ages and educational backgrounds regardless of their socioeconomic background. Being a mother friendly workplace where we offer flexible working hours, working remotely, and including pregnant mothers within the team as an active team member whose contribution is valued. 

• We accommodate a trauma informed approach within the team and within the services that we provide and our interactions with the customers, to make sure that our content and groups are not traumatizing to women in their vulnerable states of illness or normal transitions as in pregnancy and postpartum. 

• Upgrading our content to accommodate for accessibility e.g. fonts, colors, etc.
  

• Our plan is to include in the team women of older age groups and various nationalities, team members with disabilities. 

• Business to customer (B2C): through self-paced courses (pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, fertility awareness.) directly to end users who are single women, married couples, and expecting couples.
  In this model, we reach our customers through digital marketing strategies & partnerships.
  This model encompasses diverse revenue streams, such as transactional (pay-per-course) streams, and subscription models for other services or tracks.

• Business to business (B2B): through schools, universities, health and maternal health apps, insurance companies, corporates, and health and fertility centers. Their benefits are to reduce healthcare costs off insurance plans and improve productivity as a consequence of improving quality of life.
  In B2B, we have 3 options: direct-to-consumer through offering discounts to customers & commission to the business, bulk seat subscriptions, and dedicated branded online classrooms.

• Business to Non-Profit: through partnerships to offer solutions to vulnerable and underserved communities such as rural, low-income, orphans, individuals with disabilities, refugees, displaced populations, and conflict zones.

• Developing a strong b2b model with for-profit organizations through a business development and sales team that works towards partnerships for bulk subscriptions. 

• Developing relevant versions of our courses for collaboration with nonprofit organizations with proven scientific evidence on its effectiveness regarding clinical outcomes, acceptability, and cost. 

• Expanding marketing efforts for 

  • Digital platforms such as social media, website, email marketing, affiliate marketing,

  • Traditional platforms such as TV, radio, media press/ journals