Doula Navigator / Community Doula
About the job
- Must be a certified birth doula before employment or commit to completing Malama-sponsored doula training, including attending three births and completing CPR training.
- Be comfortable using Google Workspace (Sheets, Docs, and Drive), Notion, Slack, and Zoom, and be willing to learn additional technology.
- Be fluent in written and spoken English and bilingual in Spanish.
- Be located in Tennessee.
- Conduct outreach, check-ins, and comprehensive assessments to identify and meet patient needs via phone calls, SMS, video calls, or in-person encounters based on patient preference; assist patients with appointment setting, office visits, social services applications, and other requests.
- Coordinate with health plans, service providers, and multidisciplinary care teams to advocate for patient needs and drive services to completion.
- Use evidence-based practices such as motivational interviewing, trauma-informed care, and harm reduction to engage patients and communicate information that supports positive habit change.
- Use required care management portals to document and track care coordination and other services in a timely manner; meet patient caseload targets and prioritize services according to intensity, need, and required follow-up.
- A lactation certification such as CLC, CLE, or equivalent is strongly preferred; IBCLC is not required.
About the company
Malama Health provides doula-led, tech-enabled maternal care for high-risk pregnancies, primarily serving Medicaid populations. The service combines mobile app-enabled remote monitoring (glucose, meals, Bluetooth devices) with in-person and virtual Doula-Care Navigators who support from pregnancy through 12 months postpartum, and integrate with health plans and clinical systems via an EHR-agnostic platform. It identifies clinical risks and escalates to clinicians, while helping patients access social services; revenue comes from per-member-per-month payments from Medicaid managed care plans and health systems with outcome-based incentives. The company aims to scale equitable maternal care, improve outcomes (e.g., reduced postpartum diabetes, fewer preterm births, fewer C-sections) and broaden geographic reach through partnerships and value-based care.
Company Size
11-50
Company Stage
Grant
Total Funding
$9.3M
Headquarters
Palo Alto, California
Founded
2022
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- March 2026’s $9.2 million seed from Acumen America funds expansion beyond California, Texas, Colorado.
- Malama cites 2,500-plus patients with 38% fewer preterm births and 40% less postpartum diabetes.
- Its network spans 600-plus clinics and hospitals, including Stanford Health Care, UCSF Health, UCLA Health.
What critics are saying
- Medicaid state-by-state reimbursement changes can erase Malama’s growth plan within one contract cycle.
- Clinical evidence still comes from company-reported cohorts, not a large independent multisite trial.
- Loss of one large Medicaid managed-care contract can strand fixed tech and doula overhead nationwide.
What makes Malama Health unique
- Malama’s doula-Care Navigator model combines in-home support, remote monitoring, and real-time clinician escalation.
- It targets Medicaid pregnancies, where continuous postpartum support remains underbuilt and reimbursement-fragmented.
- Stanford-born founders Mika Eddy and Orlando Li built EHR-agnostic workflows around gestational diabetes.
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Benefits
- Flexible Work Hours
- Training Programs