Rethinking maternity care: how Mino Care is building culturally safe birth support
With referrals incoming from 20+ clinics in Canada, Mino Care is proving its model
Time and again, inquiries and investigations reveal the same findings: maternal deaths that could have been prevented, pain dismissed, warning signs missed. Yet what’s often missing are scalable solutions that could actually fix it.
In Canada, one initiative is beginning to show what that might look like. Mino Care, founded by health-researcher Elsie Amoako, has developed a model of care that combines medical partnership with community understanding. What started as a graduate research project has evolved into a network of wrap-around perinatal and reproductive-health services working with more than 20 healthcare institutions. With promising results at home, the organisation is now preparing to expand to the UK and France.
“We make sure that women and birthing persons have the safest and most culturally safe experiences possible,” says Amoako. “Everyone deserves the same quality of care.”
A new kind of support system
Mino Care operates as a virtual perinatal and reproductive health centre, linking hospitals, community clinics and midwifery practices to an ecosystem of specialists who can continue care once patients leave the ward. The support ranges from doula and lactation services to pelvic-floor therapy, mental-health counselling, childcare coordination and postpartum massage.
Its distinctive feature is cultural safety. Each professional is selected not only for clinical expertise but for an ability to understand the languages, faiths and social contexts of the people they serve.
“Our professionals come from different religions, languages and communities,” Amoako explains. “That understanding can completely change outcomes.”
She recalls one case in which hospital staff were struggling to explain a woman’s low iron levels.
“One of our midwives recognised, just by looking at her hair, that she belonged to a specific Rastafari community whose diet restricts certain foods,” she says. “That small insight explained her symptoms immediately – something her doctors hadn’t known.”
Care for everyone
Although Mino Care was created to address racial inequities in maternal health, its doors are open to all.
“We serve those who are considered the most vulnerable or the most high-risk, but then we also serve everyone” Amoako says.
“We’ve had mothers who are lawyers having their first baby and just need extra help. We don’t turn anyone away – we support patients from all backgrounds.”
For her, pregnancy is a universally fragile moment.
“Every woman or birthing person experiences some kind of difficulty,” she says. “Just in different ways.”
Bridging the gap between the clinic and the home
Across Canada, the UK and elsewhere, bias, exhaustion and lack of cultural understanding continue to shape outcomes. Amoako points to the UK, where Black women remain several times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth. Recent tragedies – including the high-profile death of YouTuber Nicole Thea, who reported severe headaches before dying at eight months pregnant – have drawn attention to those gaps. Likewise, women in the public eye such as Melissa Holdbrook-Akposoe (Melissa’s Wardrobe), Annie Drea and Patricia Bright have spoken openly about their traumatic birth experiences.
“These stories show it’s not just about income or access,” Amoako says. “It’s about whether the system understands you – and listens to you.”
Mino Care does not replace hospitals or clinicians; it fills the spaces between them. “We’re an add-on to the system,” Amoako explains. “Those professionals still need to be trained – but when patients go home, we’re the ones making sure they don’t feel alone.”
“Care can literally be the difference between life and death,” she adds. “That extra phone call, that extra visit – it can change everything.”
Evidence of change
Originally founded in 2017 as Mommy Monitor and rebranded in 2023, Mino Care now receives referrals from more than twenty Canadian health institutions.
Mino Care’s Perinatal Pathways Program has embedded its staff in community clinics, where they coordinate and navigate care and collect outcomes data.
“Every year we grow more,” Amoako says. “One of our partners is now entering a third-year contract with us because the results have been so strong.”
Feedback from both patients and institutions shows consistently high satisfaction.
“We get messages from people saying, ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you,’” she says.
Looking beyond Canada
With maternity inequalities under renewed scrutiny and health budgets under strain, Amoako believes similar partnerships could work in Europe.
“Our healthcare systems are quite similar,” she says. “In Canada, we’ve worked directly with government and institutions – I think the NHS could adopt something similar. It just makes sense.”
For France, the first focus will be perinatal mental health; in the UK, the emphasis would be on reducing racial disparities in birth outcomes.
Mino Care also plans to extend its model beyond maternity to reproductive and menopause care, addressing conditions such as fibroids and PCOS.
“Women often don’t know what’s going on in their bodies until fertility becomes an issue,” Amoako says. “We want to change that.”
“It’s always been important”
What frustrates her most is how long women’s health has remained an afterthought.
“There’s such little research and support in these areas,” she says. “It’s always been important – we’ve just been doing the work quietly.”
As Mino Care looks to expand abroad, its aim remains simple: to embed empathy, evidence and cultural awareness where they have too often been absent.
“Care shouldn’t depend on where you live, or whether your provider understands your culture,” Amoako says. “When we recognise that – when we build systems that listen – that’s when lives will change.”
Mino Care is one of nine startups selected for the 2025 Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) FemTech program organised by the Government of Canada. This program is free for the selected participants, and it provides access to mentors, a peer network, masterclasses delivered by subject matter experts on topics like the market landscape, IP considerations, fund raising, regulatory issues, public relations, and more, and a dedicated visit to the UK and France to connect founders with potential partners and customers. This article is part of a partnership with the High Commission Canada in the UK.