Maven Clinic

Winter storm outside. Cabin fever inside. Parents… improvising like champions. ❄️🏠 When you’re stuck indoors, play doesn’t need to be big, expensive, or Pinterest-perfect to be good for kids. Some of the best advice we've heard reminds parents that the best indoor play during long weather days is: ✨ Predictable: a loose routine helps kids feel safe when everything outside feels chaotic 🕺 Physical: obstacle courses, dance breaks, crawling games help burn energy and regulate emotions 🎨 Child-led: boredom can spark creativity when kids get to decide If it feels chaotic, messy, or loud, that’s not failure. That’s kids coping. And parents showing up exactly as they need to. 💙 Stay safe, stay healthy. We’re here for you and your family through the storms. 🎥 courtesy of @emily.fauver

Fertility is still often framed as a women’s health issue, even though male factors play a role in an estimated 50% of known infertility cases. The result: many men remain overlooked, under-informed, and untested. A recently-published peer-reviewed study in Elsevier Science Direct F&S Reports examines barriers and attitudes toward semen testing among males who are planning or attempting to conceive and have not yet undergone testing. The survey, conducted by Maven and Posterity Health surveyed 500+ men ages 25-49 who are trying or planning to conceive and found: ➡️ About half of men who are planning or attempting to conceive are likely to test (49%). ➡️ 53% of men would be open to testing at home. ➡️ Top barriers to testing are cost (49%) and confidence in their fertility (39%). ➡️ Most men prefer to improve their fertility on their own (63%) and are interested in using digital health tools to support their fertility (88%) For employers offering fertility benefits, the findings highlight the importance of including male reproductive health, particularly access to affordable testing, education, and digital support. Read the full article in ScienceDirect F&S Reports → https://lnkd.in/gnGW_2Vn

People come to Pinterest to imagine what’s next. Boards for the home they hope to have, the family they’re building, and the life they’re slowly shaping. Health follows a similar rhythm, especially for women and families. Across different life stages, people find themselves looking ahead and quietly asking: Will I want children? How will I balance work and caregiving? What will it feel like to age in my own body? Too often, people are left to navigate these questions on their own. 📍That’s why we’re proud to announce Maven Clinic’s partnership with Pinterest. Through this partnership, Pinterest is translating this ethos into real, tangible support for its workforce—offering access to support across every chapter of women's and family health. Last week, our founder and CEO Kate Ryder joined Pinterest’s Chief People Officer Doniel Sutton (she/her) at Pinterest’s San Francisco office for a candid conversation about the realities of navigating work alongside major life and health moments, and how strong benefits can make these moments easier to navigate— for people and the companies that support them. As Kate shared during the discussion, "when companies like Pinterest step up and recognize the full reality of people’s lives, it’s worth celebrating. It shows a genuine understanding that employees are juggling a lot, and that there are seasons when showing up at work looks different—and that’s okay.” ➡️ Read more about the conversation and our new partnership here: https://lnkd.in/gHhe-EvC

Maven Clinic recently launched a dedicated NICU support program, designed to serve as a constant and always-on companion to parents of the hospital’s tiniest patients. We did it because while we know the NICU saves lives, it also a place where parents often feel totally without control. In the latest issue of The Preprint, Neel Shah examines why the NICU keeps so many stable, growing babies there for weeks while families wait for discharge—a reflection of a system that extends care in units built for acuity, not transition, and that rarely treats parents as full partners. Since 1995, NICU capacity in the U.S. has grown by more than 65 percent, even as birth rates have declined and outcomes for premature infants have improved. More babies are admitted to the NICU than ever before, and more than 80 percent reach a point where their care no longer resembles intensive care at all — yet discharge remains highly variable and deeply subjective. Leaders like Dr. Ross Sommers MD of  Firstday Healthcare are building toward a different model: one that acknowledges the vast gray space between intensive care and home, and treats parents as essential partners in safely closing that gap. At Maven, our NICU support program is built on the same premise — extending care beyond the hospital walls with education, 24/7 coaching, and continuity for families both in the NICU and after discharge. Rethinking NICU care is not a leap of faith. When parents are prepared and supported, babies can go home sooner and more safely. The work ahead is execution — against evidence we already have, for families who have already waited long enough. Read the full Substack here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gWpE2ERN

As healthcare leaders descended on San Francisco for JP Morgan’s Annual Healthcare Conference this week, Axios zeroed in on one of the most consequential questions facing our industry: how do we build—and sustain—trust in today’s dynamic world? At a moment when confidence in healthcare is being tested on multiple fronts, this conversation created space for leaders to step back and consider what trust actually demands from healthcare companies today. Thank you to Axios for convening the discussion, and to Erin Brodwin for a thoughtful conversation with our founder and CEO Kate Ryder that explored the impact of AI and why trust is essential to its responsible adoption, how policy changes are shaping what comes next for the category, and much more. Photo credit: Chris Constantine on behalf of Axios

In my New England household, January means ski season. But like most parents, it also means sick season. Kids get sick. Parents get sick. And in these moments, families rely on public health officials to guide us, especially when our children are most vulnerable. This week, without scientific evidence, the CDC opted to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for all children from 17 down to 11. In this new guidance, six important vaccines—hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal disease, rotavirus, influenza, and RSV—are no longer universally recommended. Many of these infections are familiar--they are truly awful to experience and in some cases terrifying. Talk to any parent of a baby with RSV at home, and you know the look in their eyes well. It is the leading cause of hospitalization in babies. Rotavirus causes severe diarrhea and dehydration. Meningitis causes brain swell and is often fatal. Thankfully, parents can still choose these vaccines. For now, insurance coverage is not changing. Our position at Maven Clinic is not changing, and our providers are available 24/7 to offer factual guidance. The problem is that when long-standing recommendations change without basis, it causes confusion. Parents may reasonably assume these vaccines are now riskier, even when access and coverage haven’t changed. Families deserve clarity, consistency, and a public-health system that assuages their worst fears rather than amplifying them.

Ins/Outs for 2026: Women’s and Family Health Benefits Edition OUT: ❌ Benefits that treat families like a monolith ❌ Fertility benefits that only focus on women ❌ Shame-based weight narratives in women’s health ❌ Expecting parents to “power through” burnout ❌ Benefits without a clear ROI ❌ Menopause care driven by products and supplements instead of evidence-based medicine ❌ Benefits that are clunky to administer and create more work for HR ❌ Treating ChatGPT like your doctor IN: ✅ Digital health with receipts: real outcomes, real ROI ✅ Fertility benefits that include meaningful support for men ✅ Recognizing metabolic health as core to reproductive health journeys ✅ Designing benefits for the real demands of working parenthood ✅ Understanding that benefits that support families are benefits that work for everyone ✅ Menopause benefits that address the whole person, including access to HRT ✅ Benefits leaders partnering with vendors to co-design solutions that actually work ✅ Treating ChatGPT as a tool that helps people become better, more informed patients

January re-entry is harder than we admit — especially for working parents. After weeks of disrupted schedules, travel, school breaks, and patchwork childcare, many parents are navigating a double reset: helping their kids return to routine while trying to regain focus at work. That overlap often shows up as fatigue, distraction, or emotional overload — not because parents are disengaged at work, but because transitions demand real cognitive and emotional energy. Research consistently shows that during periods of change, predictable routines, emotional validation, and flexibility help families recalibrate faster. Here are a few expert-backed strategies Maven Parent Coaches often recommend during periods of transition: 🗓️ Restart routines gradually. Focus on one anchor routine at a time (bedtime, mornings, meals). Resetting everything at once can increase stress and decision fatigue. 🗣️ Normalize big feelings. Irritability and resistance are common during transitions — for kids and adults. Naming that reality reduces guilt and helps people re-engage more effectively. 🤝 Reduce unnecessary load where possible. A lighter first week back, including fewer non-essential meetings and less post-work social plans can meaningfully ease the transition. 🙏 Be patient and give yourself grace. Focus comes back faster when stress comes down. If things feel harder than usual, it's because transitions can be hard. Give yourself (and your family) some grace before rushing back to “normal.” Transitions aren't easy. But how we move through them — at home and at work — matters and can ease the reset for your whole family.

While company offices slow down for the holidays, families don’t. And Maven Clinic doesn’t either. We’re here 365 days a year, showing up in the moments that make people feel most vulnerable, most hopeful, and our most human. This year, Maven members scheduled over 200,000 virtual appointments—nearly one every two minutes, all year long. Day and night. Weekdays and weekends. In moments big and small. And, just as no two families are truly the same, no two appointments were either. As the year came to a close, we took a moment to look back at a few patterns that emerged along the way. - Monday was surprisingly our busiest day, with most appointments landing between 1 PM and 3 PM EST – right when traditional offices close for lunch. Healthcare should fit into nap time, between meetings, in all the moments you carve out for yourself. - The words we saw most often before appointments? "Baby's sleep," followed closely by "breastfeeding" and "anxiety" – three concerns that rarely travel alone. - Mental health professionals, including coaches, were our #1 most booked provider, followed by OB-GYNs, and then pediatric sleep coaches. Families are telling us, clearly, that caring for the mind is inseparable from caring for the body. - The two most prescribed medications on Maven’s platform this year were Menopur and HRT. Menopur makes IVF possible, and HRT replaces estrogen and progesterone for women in menopause. The federal government has promised to make both more widely available in the future, and we’ll continue to work hard to expand access in the year ahead. It is a true honor that at Maven we get to spend 365 days showing up for so many of life’s most important moments. Here’s to another year of showing up. Another year of momentum. And, much better care for women and families. Onwards! #werewithyou #maven

Last week, Maven gathered maternal health change makers in New York for our annual MPact for Families Summit. From community-based organizations to clinicians, advocates, and operators, the room brought together people with different vantage points on maternal health — and a shared commitment to moving it forward. As our Chief Medical Officer, Neel Shah, writes in the latest issue of The Preprint: “Hope for women and families does not require perfect alignment. It asks only that enough of us move, decisively, in the direction of repair.” This year’s MPact for Families Fellows — Perinatal Health Equity Initiative and Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services — embody what it means to move decisively in the direction of repair. They are building the trust that is critical to driving better outcomes and demonstrating what it looks like when care is rooted in community needs and solutions.   Through the day-long summit, we spoke openly about the challenges community-based organizations are navigating: strengthening operations as funding streams evaporate, supporting families amid a fraying safety net, and sustaining teams in the face of ongoing trauma. And yet, despite these conversations, our fellows continue to show up — for families and for one another. That commitment left many of us with a feeling we’ve been eager for during a challenging year: hope. Not the passive kind, but the kind rooted in action, honesty, and partnership. We’re deeply grateful to our fellows, to our partners at 4Kira4Moms, Inc., and to the many Mavens who made the day possible. The momentum is real — and it’s being built by community leaders every single day. Explore the latest issue of The Preprint and learn more about our fellows here: ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gFKK2TUV