- Twentyeight Health provides underserved groups with online reproductive and sexual health care.
- The startup is partnering with health plans, nonprofits, and colleges to reach these low-income patients.
- Check out the pitch deck Twentyeight Health used to raise $8.3 million in pre-Series A funding.
There are plenty of startups offering birth control and other reproductive health services online, from Hims and Hers and The Pill Club to Nurx.
The market started to pick up steam during the COVID-19 pandemic and picked up again last year when the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade sparked a nationwide debate over reproductive rights.
But digital health startups don’t always build those services around the people who need them most, says Amy Fan, cofounder and president of Twentyeight Health.
Twentyeight Health primarily provides reproductive and sexual health services to underserved communities, such as low-income patients and patients of color. About 55% of Twentyeight Health’s patients use Medicaid, which provides health care coverage to low-income individuals and families, and more than 60% of the startup’s clients said they didn’t have access to birth control before using Twentyeight Health, according to Company. .
“This is all geared towards underserved communities, and that’s just not something another company is doing,” Fan said.
Fan launched Twentyeight Health in December 2018 together with Bruno Van Tuykom, a co-founder and the CEO of the startup. the new investors RH Capital, Seae Ventures and Impact Engine, and the existing investors SteelSky Ventures, Third Prime and Town Hall Ventures.
Labeling the raise as a pre-Series A round allowed Twentyeight Health to get more funding from seed capital investors at a time when the market’s downturn is causing later-stage investors to pull out, Fan said.
Named for the average menstrual cycle length of 28 days, Twentyeight Health also offers morning-after pills, prenatal vitamins, herpes treatments and COVID-19 testing, in 34 states, as well as Washington, DC.
Twentyeight Health added abortion pills to its list of offers in February. Medication abortions through Twentyeight Health are currently only available to patients in New York and California, where state regulations clearly support access to abortion pills by mail, Fan said. She said the startup plans to expand access to the service to more states over time.
Twentyeight Health provided Insider with the pitch deck that helped it raise $8.3 million in pre-Series A funding. The startup removed information about its contracts with health plans that were not yet public before sharing the presentation with Insider.