The Wallace Center is working with entrepreneurs, advocates, and health systems to learn how appropriate smartphone technology can help improve reproductive health equity. Approximately 85% of Americans own smartphones(link is external) – more than have computers or home broadband – and this number is fairly constant across racial, ethnic, and income groups. For 27% of low-income Americans, their smartphone is their only connection to the internet. Smartphones can be a means of meeting people where they are – to empower patients, connect communities, provide health education, and allow remote patient monitoring.
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Maternal Fetal Medicine Physician Use of Telehealth During Covid-19
Remote Blood Pressure Monitoring (PI: Kim Harley)
The Wallace Center is collaborating with Highland Hospital, a county safety-net hospital serving Medi-Cal patients in Oakland, CA, to implement a text-based home blood pressure monitoring program for patients with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.
Apps and Innovation
The Wallace Center supports early entrepreneurs in the digital health space to advance maternal health equity.
The Wallace Center is an early partner in Bay Area startup, Birth By Us (BBU), a personalized app for Black women and birthing people to support them in their perinatal journey. BBU co-founder, Ijeoma Uche, worked with Wallace Center faculty and Executive Director to move BBU from seed-stage to early pilot stage in just over 12 months. While completing her MPH at UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 2023, Ms. Uche participated in and won multiple pitch contests, presented at industry conferences, and was featured in national-level MCH publications.
Read more about the Birth By Us and Wallace Center:
Internships with Online, App, and Tech Organizations
We collaborate with tech, industry, and community partners to create graduate student internship opportunities at their organization. Internships have taken place at startups, innovative community health organizations, digital health companies, and think tanks. Students receive valuable workplace experience and training, and our collaborators get access to some of the top students entering the public health workforce.