Culina Health Raises $7.9M Series A to Fill the Gap in Payer-Sponsored Nutrition Services

The Funding Follows Culina Health’s Rapid Growth and Exemplary Outcomes in Patient Engagement, Disease Prevention, and Cost Savings

Culina Health, the digital platform that makes clinical nutrition care inclusive and accessible for everyone, announced today that it has raised a $7.9 million Series A funding round on the strength of 117 percent year-over-year growth and exceptional patient engagement and clinical outcomes.

The round, which brought Culina Health’s total capital raised to $20 million, was led by Healthworx, the innovation and investment arm of CareFirst. The investment underscores Healthworx’s commitment to the company, following a 2022 investment that made Culina Health the first and only digital nutrition company to be backed by a strategic payer. Additional participation in the round includes Rethink Impact, Collab Capital, Collide Capital, Vamos Ventures, Tensility Venture Partners, Cake Ventures, and GW Ventures. With this new capital, Culina Health will expand its offerings to support dietitians and patients, implement new AI platforms to improve care efficiency, and enhance its leadership with key hires.

Co-founded by registered dietitians Vanessa Rissetto and Tamar Samuels in 2020, Culina Health takes a clinically rigorous approach to nutrition. It connects patients and healthcare providers to a nationwide network of trusted registered dietitians who provide high-quality, personalized virtual nutrition care across specialty areas of weight loss, chronic disease prevention and management, and healthy eating and wellness. The company partners with major insurers and Medicare, making its digital platform available to 70 percent of the U.S. population.

“Research shows 90 percent of Americans would benefit from seeing a dietitian, yet only .02 percent of the population has done so,” said Rissetto. “It’s clear that nutrition is a vital function of long-term health, and registered dietitians should be empowered to be at the forefront of providing this care. With a clinical-first, evidence-based approach, Culina Health is uniquely positioned to support patients and providers with the most effective and connected nutrition journey. With the help of our investors and health plan partners, we are one step closer to our shared mission of making world-class nutrition care available to everyone and putting registered dietitians back in the driver’s seat of Food as Medicine interventions.”

To date, Culina Health maintains more than 1,000 referring providers and has served more than 10,000 patients through the Culina Health Method™. This proprietary methodology integrates evidence-based clinical nutrition protocols and non-judgmental, culturally-affirming care to help patients achieve health outcomes. Culina Health Method™ has set new standards for nutrition care with above-industry outcomes including 100 percent prevention of prediabetes disease progression for patients, significant A1c, cholesterol, and systolic blood pressure reduction, as well as $7,000 cost savings per patient per year, amounting to $10.3 billion annual cost savings at scale.

“New interventions that engage members, improve health outcomes, and ultimately reduce long-term costs associated with managing chronic conditions are core to the potential of whole-person health,” said Doba Parushev, Managing Partner at Healthworx. “Through its clinically driven approach to nutrition and unparalleled level of support, compassion, and attention from its care team, Culina Health has created a viable solution that can be deployed at scale, and has the potential to improve the health of millions of people.”

About Culina Health:

Culina Health believes everyone deserves quality nutrition advice from a credentialed expert. We’re on a mission to make clinical nutrition accessible and sustainable for all so that nobody has to turn to chatGPT, search engines, and social media influencers for important information about their health. We pair patients with registered dietitians for personalized, one-on-one virtual nutrition care that is science-based, inclusive, and culturally competent while coordinating care with referring providers to benefit patients. We offer non-judgmental, sustainable, and multilingual support that honors all patient body sizes and backgrounds.

The Culina Health Method™ has demonstrated improved health outcomes for patients with chronic conditions, enhancing quality of life and decreasing overall healthcare costs in the long term, proving that dietitian-led Food as Medicine interventions save lives and reduce the total cost of care. To date, our team of 90+ registered dietitians has delivered over 80,000 telehealth clinical nutrition sessions. We accept all major insurance plans and see patients in all 50 states.

For more, visit https://culinahealth.com/.

About Healthworx:

Healthworx operates at the intersection of healthcare and innovation by creating, co-creating, and investing in companies that are improving healthcare quality, accessibility, and affordability. As the innovation and investment arm of CareFirst, Healthworx envisions a healthier future for all people by changing the way health works. Learn more at www.healthworx.com.

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