Happy Mama Closes Gaps in Maternal Health Care

Reach is proud to announce the launch of HAPPY MAMA (http://happymama.global), a biopsychosocial wellness platform designed to support women throughout the tender moments of motherhood. The solution offers a compendium of resources, tools, and services for pre-conception, pregnancy, labor and delivery, and postpartum. Additionally with remote monitoring and teleconsulting capabilities, Happy Mama is a comprehensive digital health solution for obstetrical decision support and self-empowered perinatal care for women.

About Reach

Reach is a 501c3 global social impact organization focused on improving the healthcare experience of both patients and providers. Maternal mortality and morbidity prevention is a top priority area for the organization. Reach is also the founder of the National Save Moms Campaign (http://savemoms.us), Save Moms Global (http://savemoms.global), the Maternal Application of Technology for Community Health (MATCH) Coalition (http://matchcoalition.us), and Happy Mama (http://happymama.global) 

Learn more about REACH at http://reachtl.org

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Video transcript:

Saul Marquez: Today, I'm going to present to you all a very special and amazing person. Her name is Fran Ayalasomayajula. She is the President and founder of Reach. She has been doing work with this global nonprofit organization for the last five to six years doing a lot of work around advocacy, volunteering, research and one of the areas of research that Fran has been involved with is maternal health. A lot of the work that's been done there, the gaps that have been uncovered have actually culminated into what is a solution for women and their families today called Happy Mama and so Happy Mama is something that Fran, we want to ask you about. Tell us what Happy Mama is and how it's contributing to the happiness and health of women.

Fran Ayalasomayajula: Sure. First off I want to say thank you to everyone who's been with us on this journey today. It has been amazing. It's our inaugural Happy Mama expo and it all came out of just what Saul had described. Years of research that we've conducted in the space of maternal health and while we know that there are a lot of challenges, we're really focused on solutions and we started that off by doing a lot of works all in education and thought leadership and today we are proud to launch Happy Mama. That's our most recent innovation coming out of Reach. Happy Mama is a psychosocial wellness platform that's really designed to help support women throughout their pregnancy, postpartum and beyond or this what we like to refer to at Reach as the tender moments of motherhood which quite frankly sort of begin approximately three months prior to conception and continue on for a period roughly 12 months postpartum, so really talking about a 24 month period of time for which we are very pleased to be able to support women on their maternity journey.

Saul: Yeah, that's fantastic. Those moments are so important, Fran and you know it's really interesting the some of the partnerships that you all have formed, Harman for example, a Samsung company. Why did you guys partner with them? Tell us a little bit more about that.

Fran: Yeah, well you know it's really interesting, on the one end they are very deep into the digital technology space and digital health technology and they have an amazing platform and that was really important to us. We pride ourselves in really working with organizations and brands that we know can bring the highest quality to the products that go to the market and that's what we want to make sure our name was attached to but there are also some unique characteristics of Harman that in some respects sort of reflect where we see the opportunity to be in terms of taking care of one another and forming a solid community and that is in leveraging technology like a media technology as an example to be able to really draw people in as a community into the space of education and so that's what we see in the technology. We're looking forward to Harman playing a role in that in our ability to really expand the reach of our technology into over 30 countries and we're just elated by that because women around the world need not only do they need it, they deserve it and we're here to make sure they have access to it.

Saul: Wow, Fran. I just got goosebumps with that. Just incredible vision that you have for this and so if you had to think about one thing about Happy Mama that you want the people that are with us today to take away, what is that one thing? 

Fran: I want you to know that the platform that Happy Mama is a platform that is there to support you across your journey. I mean look at it. Life is dynamic, pregnancy is dynamic, no two pregnancies are alike. If you've even if you've had previous pregnancies, you cannot predict what the pregnant this current pregnancy is going to be like or what a future one is going to be like and even in that moment that you might think everything is coming together and everything is good, stuff happens and it's important that you know there are tools and resources available to support you and Happy Mama is that platform. It is a platform that provides for physical, mental, emotional, spiritual as well as for the social economic needs of women and their families. It's a very comprehensive and dynamic platform. One thing I want to share or elaborate on Saul, I hope you don't mind to be kind of mixing it up a little bit in terms of the Q&A is that you know one thing that is concerning for both women in search of answers and a concern for clinicians and health educators is that there's a lot of information that's out there and sometimes it can be very daunting and you don't know what information you can trust. This is another reason why we've been very particular in the organizations that we have participating with us in Happy Mama and the content, the places from which we gain our content. For example we've integrated the American Heart Association's care plans for diabetes as well as for high blood pressure and and for just healthy lifestyle. Lastly I'll just say that along with this monthly program the platform is designed in two manners: one, it's for you to be able to use it on your own right just like the way you might use a Fitbit device, right. You don't wait for your doctor to tell you to put on a Fitbit. You go, you get your Fitbit and you do your thing. That's the same thing with our platform. The platform is there and designed for you to be able to self-care but at the same time the platform is also intended for you to be able to gain that connection with the providers that you need, so whether it's lactation support for breastfeeding that you might need some assistance with or maybe it's mental health support for mental health and wellness or perhaps it’s that you're trying to do a little bit of weight management and you need a health coach to help take you along, carry you on that journey, the tool has access to providers of those services and in addition to that has a back-end tool that's intended for your doctors to be able to use so that your personal doctor can connect with you one-on-one because what's happening is they're oftentimes missing what's happening. You're not in their office 24/7 and by the time you get in there, maybe that thing that was a problem for you doesn't even show up so we want to make sure that there's no doubt and that you are being heard and so we're so excited about it.

Saul: Fran, thank you so much.