Funding through Arkansas’ Rural Health Transformation Program will place ten trained doulas in rural clinic care teams, connected through MySwaddle’s care coordination platform

MILWAUKEE, Sept. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — MySwaddle, a technology-enabled maternal health platform developed by Holista, today announced that its partner, the Doula Alliance of Arkansas (DA-AR), has been awarded $860,500 through Arkansas’ Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP). The grant, announced by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders on August 27, was one of 50 awards issued statewide under the program’s first funding round, which is distributing $149.3 million to rural hospitals, health systems, and community organizations across Arkansas.

The award will fund “Access Starts at Home: Rural Maternal Care Coordination and Doula Support,” a one-year initiative placing ten certified community-based doulas within rural clinic care teams across five regions of the state: Northwest, North Central, Upper Delta, Lower Delta, and Southwest Arkansas. The program is expected to serve approximately 250 pregnant and postpartum women, providing continuous support from early pregnancy through six months after birth.

Arkansas has one of the highest concentrations of rural counties in the country, with 63 of its 75 counties classified as rural and nearly half considered maternity care deserts, meaning no hospital, birth center, or obstetric provider is available locally. DA-AR currently has doula coverage in 24 rural counties, and its doulas are often the most consistent point of contact women in these communities have throughout pregnancy and the postpartum period.

Under the new program, each doula will be based at a partner clinic and connected to the care team through MySwaddle’s care coordination platform, which supports shared communication, documentation, screening, education, and referrals between doulas, participants, and clinical providers. The platform is built to function in low-bandwidth settings and includes offline capabilities, addressing one of the most significant barriers to consistent care in rural and frontier areas.

“Doulas are often the first person a rural mother turns to when something feels wrong, and until now, that knowledge rarely made it back to the clinical team,” said Kate Grohall, President and Co-Founder of MySwaddle. “This grant lets us close that gap. When a trained doula and a woman’s clinical provider are working from the same information, we catch problems earlier and keep women connected to care they might otherwise miss.”

“Our doulas have always shown up for rural families, often driving long distances without any real infrastructure behind them,” said Liyah Wasson, Executive Director of the Doula Alliance of Arkansas. “This funding lets us build that infrastructure. We can train and compensate doulas properly, place them inside clinic care teams, and give them a real way to communicate with providers. That is how we get more women through pregnancy and postpartum safely, no matter how far they live from the nearest hospital.”

The grant is funded through the federal Rural Health Transformation Program’s Promoting Access, Coordination, and Transformation (PACT) priority, established under the One Big Beautiful Bill and administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Arkansas expects to award approximately $209 million through the program this year and up to $1 billion over the next five years.

The partnership builds on a shared model between DA-AR and MySwaddle: pairing a trusted, community-based workforce with technology-enabled care coordination to close gaps in access, communication, and continuity for rural families. Findings from the grant period are expected to support long-term sustainability planning, including reimbursement pathways created under Arkansas’ Certified Community-Based Doula Certification Act of 2025.

About MySwaddle MySwaddle is a digital maternal health platform developed by Holista that supports pregnant women and new mothers from pregnancy through 6 months postpartum, with a focus on Medicaid populations. The platform is HITRUST CSF Certified, HIPAA compliant, and SOC 2 Type II certified.

About the Doula Alliance of Arkansas The Doula Alliance of Arkansas is a statewide nonprofit organization advancing the professional standards of doulas across the state through advocacy, education, and workforce development, with a membership of trained and credentialed doulas serving all regions of Arkansas.

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SOURCE Holista