Carrot Fertility, a global fertility benefits platform, is launching a new fertility care offering focused on faith inclusivity.
The program, which the company says is the first of its kind in the space, enables members of faith and religious communities to find care that considers their unique needs. It offers personalized navigation to vetted faith-inclusive providers that can accommodate certain requests, such as compassionate transfers, adjustments to the timing of certain fertility protocols and modifications to conventional IVF procedures that allow for faith leaders to be present. It also includes telehealth access to faith-informed fertility experts for emotional guidance, as well as educational resources such as how to talk with providers about faith.
Carrot’s managed network of providers is made up of more than 900 docs working in the U.S. Not all providers can accommodate faith-specific preferences, executives said, for a variety of reasons. One might be around finances and the investment certain requests require. The company was not able to share an estimate of how many of these docs it has identified as faith-inclusive. The program will be live and available globally to members across 170 countries in January 2025.
“This isn’t something that is a nice-to-have. This is a fundamental part of healthcare,” Carrot founder and CEO Tammy Sun told Fierce Healthcare in an exclusive advanced interview.
Carrot, a 2021 Fierce 15 honoree, serves millions of members today through multinational employer and payer customers, Sun said. Since the launch of its fertility care product around 2018, Sun said, “We have seen tremendous growth in the demand both from employers and payers, as well as consumers and members, to access this type of benefit.”
While people might assume that faith and fertility are incompatible, Carrot in fact believes “they are deeply intertwined,” Sun added. “It is a very significant factor that influences how people interact with this area of healthcare.” The family-building journey is already among the most physically, emotionally and financially significant interactions a person can have. For people of faith, it is also spiritually significant. “They could really benefit from navigation support to appropriate providers, they can benefit from faith experts,” Sun explained.
In a recent survey of 400 people across the U.S. who have undergone fertility and family-building journeys in the last five years, Carrot found 84% have a faith or spiritual background. The respondents were not Carrot members. Nearly a third reported being active attendees of organized faith. The survey also found more than half of respondents with faith backgrounds said their faith impacts their healthcare decisions and a third said faith is a central guiding factor in how they select treatment options; these figures were higher for respondents with an active faith practice, at 75% and 53%, respectively.
A third of respondents with a faith background wished their fertility healthcare experience had been more inclusive of their faith. This jumped to nearly half of all respondents with an active faith practice. And 52% of respondents with a faith background considered alternatives or modified approaches to conventional IVF or IUI procedures because of their faith. The most common alternative treatment approach for respondents was timed intercourse based on guidance from a provider.
The survey also revealed how respondents of faith feel about the handling of excess embryos; the issue was of concern for 42% of respondents. More than a third reported selecting donations to other individuals, while the figure was slightly higher among those with an active faith practice. Donating to science and disposing of embryos were notably less popular options.
Sun hopes that launching this program will also encourage providers in its network to think more intentionally about these sorts of preferences and hopefully spur more widespread inclusivity in the industry.