Health IT, Startups

Startup Omada Health nabs nearly $1M to expand diabetes prevention efforts

San Francisco startup Omada Health is partnering with the California HealthCare Foundation and The Kresge […]

San Francisco startup Omada Health is partnering with the California HealthCare Foundation and The Kresge Foundation to extend its online program for pre-diabetics, called Prevent, to low income populations throughout the U.S.

The partnership comes in the form of investments totaling nearly $1 million, with $450,000 from the California Health Care Foundation and $500,000 from The Kresge Foundation, according to an announcement from Omada Health.

The funding will be used to offer Prevent to low-income patients sourced from Omada partners, including health plans, clinics and other care settings. The effort will also include development of a Spanish-language adaptation of Prevent. The two foundations will fund and publish an independent evaluation of the efficacy of Prevent in low-income populations based on data collected during the pilot.

Omada Health is focused on preventing type 2 diabetes through technological engagement with at-risk populations, with the goal of lowering healthcare costs while improving outcomes by helping alter behavioral health for the better.

“Type 2 diabetes disproportionately affects low income Americans and racial and ethnic minorities,” said Sean Duffy, CEO of Omada Health, in a statement. “These investments from CHCF and The Kresge Foundation are a tremendous validation of digital therapeutics as a high-potential new category of medical intervention.

The program, Prevent, is an online diabetes prevention program based on guidelines published by the National Diabetes Prevention Program, a public-private initiative led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Prevent program, which has already been adopted by a variety of employers and health plans, has published outcomes in the medical journal The Diabetes Educator and is credited for helping patients lose weight and make the sort of lifestyle changes shown to help reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. Omada Health said it offers pay-for-performance models for digital therapeutics, and the cost of Prevent is outcomes-based with program costs directly tied to patient success.

Omada Health, founded in 2011, hopes to target Medicaid patients in particular. The startup has raised $28.5 million through four rounds of funding.

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