How Kindred's Jessica de Mesa Is Putting Women's Healthcare on the Forefront, Online and Beyond

(SPOT.ph) “It’s 2023, pero up until now ‘di pa rin ako open to people about going to an OB-GYNE,” Mau, a 20-something working in public relations, said of her reproductive health. Like most of her sheltered girl friends, female healthcare is spoken in whispers. Worse, many women outside of her circle don’t even know or talk about it at all—it’s a gap Kindred co-founder and CEO Jessica de Mesa hopes to address as the Philippines paces towards a more digital and inclusive future for women nationwide.

“I was a former nurse, so I've always been involved in healthcare. And I was directly dealing with patients and female patients as well. And I was involved in startups for over a decade, but now I'm returning to healthcare because I want to combine the innovations that we do on the technology side, and healthcare which has lagged behind in terms of innovation,” de Mesa said.

Also read: Our Body, Our Choice: This Health Clinic in BGC Is Putting All Women's Needs First

Kindred is a response to women’s growing needs

De Mesa, a former Overseas Filipino Worker of seven years, returned to the Philippines with a goal in mind: to make women’s healthcare accessible to all.

“My own personal experiences and reflections during the pandemic really led me to go back to healthcare because I wanted to make a really meaningful impact in our country and that's also the reason why I came back to the Philippines,” she told SPOT.ph.

This time around, she is “combining tech and business and healthcare and my consumer lifestyle expertise in the women's space in order to build the future of women's health.”

What is Kindred anyway?

“Kindred is a destination for women’s health, and we provide end-to-end solutions from trusted health care professionals. Whether that's virtually because we have a virtual clinic or in person, because we now have a physical clinic.”

Founded just in 2022, Kindred started out as a purely online endeavor aimed at helping women seeking specific healthcare services they wouldn’t otherwise find in hospitals or clinics lacking a dedicated space for girls. In early 2023, Kindred opened its first physical clinic in BGC.

“We're very proud to say that we are providing a safe space for women. So our patient experience is also what differentiates us from other clinics…we make sure that it's a safe and a non-judgmental space for women,” de Mesa said.

So let’s say you’re in need of birth control, don’t know who to approach about strange discharge down there, or you’ve got a pregnancy scare—Kindred is committed to being the comfort zone you can run to, judgment-free.

Services offered at Kindred

All women are welcome at Kindred. Whether you’re a single gal trying to know more about your reproductive health or you’re a first-time mom figuring out lactation, their doors are open to guide you.

“You can rely on us for consultation, such as seeing your OB-GYNE whether it's for PCOS, pregnancy, infertility, lactation. Or you can also see other specialists as well like for mental health with our psychologists and psychiatrists because we look after the woman as a whole, not just isolated body parts so we're trying to provide holistic health care also. And in our clinics, you can get your HPV vaccine or cervical cancer vaccine and other types of vaccines from us. You can have your Pap smear done, ultrasounds and other gynecological procedures in our clinic,” de Mesa summed up.

Aside from reproductive health services, the clinic also offers services to address holistic care, such as mental health services, couples therapy, and even checking your overall physical health and hormones. As such, even men in relationships, marriages, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community can seek help from Kindred, depending on the service.

Growing pains

Kindred, during its inception, was very personal to de Mesa and co-founder Abetina Valenzuela who had their fair share of hassle-ridden check-ups and helplessness when it came to local women’s healthcare services. But at its core, Kindred represents the helping hand all women can hold no matter where they stand in life.

Women’s woes are tough enough, but add running a business, finding partners, securing funds, and keeping everything afloat to the ever-growing to-do list. For the former nurse, it’s high-time more solutions popped up—Kindred being one of them.

“There's a lack of focus on women's health because these [services we have now], it's a very generalist approach. So what really pushed me to start Kindred is it's a very personal mission. For me also, it's sort of a love letter to my younger self. Because if I knew before what I know now, I could have taken better care of my health,” she said.

The nitty gritty of permits, licenses, and data privacy are also an obstacle for de Mesa’s team as the vital processes take time and at times money that would chip away at their capital.

Serving 16-hour shifts as a frontliner during the AH1N1 outbreak in 2009 at the Lung Center of the Philippines, de Mesa knows firsthand just how hospital capacity crumbles in the face of emergencies.

“The system was already overwhelmed even before COVID actually. So imagine the surge in COVID. You know a lot of reproductive health programs stop during the pandemic,” she explained, stating how hospitals and clinics would prioritize COVID patients. Though admirable, it often meant people in need of a different type of care were neglected due to lack of manpower, which de Mesa understands.

“So my business partners, the Kindred team and I, we know many women around us and also ourselves, our personal experiences, we know a lot of women who are looking for quality health care as defined by us, because it's our body, it's our choice, but in a traditional health care setting, they don't really lay out all of the options for you,” she said.

By women, for women

“Healthcare has always been the path that I wanted to take and now that I have the means and capabilities to build solutions, better solutions for Filipinas then this is the right next step for me and my team as well,” de Mesa said.

Kindred currently runs on an all-female team comprising women who come from different walks of life to provide varying perspectives to solving issues that plague their fellow women.

“We did a lot of research and planning, customer surveys, interviews, validating the concept, hiring our initial team and just strategizing how to scale a service based business model that will fulfill our mission, which also relies on trust and credibility. So I had to make sure that the people that we partnered with are really like what I was describing earlier, are advocates of women's health and can provide quality care,” she said.

“For me it’s empowering, it’s a very supportive and collaborative environment. We’re also very effective problem-solving women’s health issues because we’re a team of women. We understand women’s pain points as well. That’s why I think we naturally attract female talent,” she said.

“I’m proud to be a woman and I embrace it, because our strength and resilience is remarkable. Even in the face of adversity, right? Sometimes, that’s even where we shine, when there are challenges, you see how resilient women are. We’ve always proven, demonstrated that we’re effective leaders at all levels as well. And even in our homes! And both. And juggling that at the same time. And across industries,” she added.

It takes a village

Aside from the doctors and healthcare providers working to give clients a safe and meaningful experience, countless other characters move behind the scenes to keep the stage upright. A marketing team, program team, tech team, operations team, and even investors are keeping Kindred running in-person, remotely, and hybrid both for the online site and physical clinic.

But more than the experts making things happen, cooperation and collaboration must transpire among the Department of Health, local government authorities, and women themselves.

“Women are scared, there's this fear of being judged as well. That's why having a safe space is very important for our patients. Or they just don't know where to start. They don't know how to navigate the healthcare system. And that's where we come in because we help them, we guide them through every step, but at the same time we're also the direct providers of that care,” she explained.

“They talk to a specialist and they'll help you and that's the barrier we're trying to break. It’s that the level of education and awareness around the country when it comes to reproductive health is very low,” she said. “They’re part of our mission. Our mission is healthcare for all womankind, so wherever they are in the Philippines, we want to be able to reach them,” she said.

The future of Kindred

“We plan to have 50 to a hundred [clinics] in the next five years, that could be small clinics, pop-up clinics so we can go to the rural areas, mobile clinics as well. We’re working with the DOH to spread information on family planning services online. In the future, we want to work with different non-profit organizations as well,” de Mesa laid out.

“In the future, I want to be able to deploy our doctors and nurses to different programs, so that can be powered by Kindred as well,” she added.

De Mesa has a big goal for the next few months: “Being accredited as a clinic so we can easily facilitate accreditation of all the doctors we work with and we’re starting with a couple of HMOs first. We have some patients who can’t pay out of pocket, so we want to be able to serve them as well. So having at least a few this year will be valuable to them,” she said.

They’re also planning to launch a mobile app to make services even more accessible, and continuing to help affiliate doctors acquaint themselves with the behind-the-scenes technology powering Kindred—not just to streamline daily operations, but also to equip doctors with digital skills they can use to better service clients even beyond the walls of Kindred.

For now, the hustle persists to grow the business even more to accommodate more patients nationwide.

“We started with a team of three people with a lot of manual processes. At first we only relied on social media, mostly organic marketing [which I think] is always a challenge for healthcare providers…what's the point of having a portfolio of amazing and vetted and trusted doctors if you can’t promote the services? So now that we've raised some funds, we're gonna invest more in marketing beyond organic marketing and hopefully we reach more, more women,” she said.

All in all, de Mesa said: “I also want to prove that we can build a great company while doing good while making a positive impact because there are so many barriers to accessing quality care.”

The Kindred clinic is at Serendra Mall Bonifacio Global City, Unit C224 and C226, 2nd floor, 11th Avenue, Taguig City. Clinic hours are from Mondays to Sundays, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Services are also available online via the Kindred website.