Fabric Health, a Philadelphia-based startup, has announced its expansion to Pittsburgh following its first place win in the Richard King Mellon Foundation’s first-ever pitch competition.
Winning a $500,000 investment from the foundation, Fabric Health will take its laundromat-based healthcare services to the Steel City, on the heels of its rollout at five laundromats in the Philadelphia market.
“We actually had been asked to expand to Pittsburgh while we were launching in Philadelphia,” said cofounder Courtney Bragg, in an interview with Technical.ly.
The team ultimately decided to take it one city at a time. However, when the prospect of setting up shop in Pittsburgh with the backing of the R.K. Mellon Foundation, Bragg explained that they couldn’t wait to “apply our learnings from Philadelphia while working with a great partner and learning from all the dynamism in Pittsburgh, both as a center of innovation, but also as a healthcare leader.”
Fabric Health’s business model centers on laundromats as places where busy people might have unused downtime. And those same laundromat customers, Bragg said, might be at risk for certain social determinants of health or simply be facing confusion or limitations with their healthcare providers.
Given that, Fabric Health uses a combination of human and technical interfaces to bridge that gap. In partnering with Pennsylvania’s state-run health and dental coverage marketplace, Pennie, Bragg and the Fabric Health team create an opportunity for interventions at laundromats that can help people receive the care they need. This includes healthcare enrollment assistance and helping individuals access more affordable prescriptions.
Fabric Health is currently operating out of five laundromats in North Philadelphia and Parkside – in partnership with The Laundry Café chain.
Beyond the expansion to Pittsburgh, Fabric Health has plans to grow its team in 2022, specifically looking for those who share the passion of its social impact mission. Also, ahead of the startup’s full launch in Pittsburgh, it will be looking for new partners in the city similar to the laundromats and healthcare providers it has worked with in Philadelphia.
