A new Chicago accelerator wants to give more Americans access to quality health care.
Launched by Matter in partnership with the AbbVie Foundation, the AbbVie Foundation Health Equity Accelerator will help scale health equity programs that look to address common health care access challenges and address health disparities in the health care system. These include geographical and physical barriers, discrimination and bias, and more.
"If you just look in the Chicago area, we have the largest mortality gap in the country," Steven Collens, CEO of Matter, told Chicago Inno.
He said this mortality gap — a 30-year difference in life expectancy among Chicagoans depending on which zip code they live in — perfectly encapsulates why health care access continues to be a problem in this country.
"Clinics, hospitals, emergency services are not evenly distributed, and that creates real challenges for people living in rural areas and inner cities. In my neighborhood, there's urgent care clinics popping up all over the place, but that's not the case in every neighborhood," Collens said.
With its newest accelerator, Matter hopes to find new solutions that can help with delivery, space and place of care for communities that don’t have great access to health care services. It also hopes to address the unequal distribution of health care resources.
The AbbVie Foundation Health Equity Accelerator will select up to five community-based organizations across the U.S. for an eight-week program. Each organization will receive a stipend of $10,000, with one receiving a $50,000 unrestricted grant. Applications are open through Oct. 27.
Collens said the accelerator will be primarily remote before finalists present their solutions at a final showcase in-person in Chicago next March.
Since its inception, 2024 Inno Fire recipient Matter has helped more than 1,000 health care startups accelerate innovation and move to commercialization.
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