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Iyah Romm, former Cityblock Health CEO, has taken the top job at pediatric health startup Hazel Health, he tells Axios Pro exclusively.

Why it matters: Hazel just merged with family telemental health company Little Otter, and Romm says he expects "similar acquisitions over time." 

How it works: Hazel partners with schools, state governments, and health plans to provide virtual behavioral health services.

With Little Otter, Hazel adds several previously untouched lines of business: psychiatry, medication management, and services for higher acuity conditions such as suicidality.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why did you acquire Little Otter, and what's your timeline for complete integration?

"We serve kids, and the opportunity to provide care for the rest of the family was a no-brainer.

We'll be launching more service lines as we go forward. For example, schools frequently ask us to provide care for teachers and staff — and since Little Otter has an adult care model, it'll allow us to pull those roadmaps forward.

We want to be in the market together by the end of early next year."

Was it a full acquisition? You recently did some layoffs.

"There are always a handful of employees who choose to opt out, but the intention here was a full-scale merger. 

Were there redundancies to be a little more efficient? Yes."

How are Medicaid cuts impacting telehealth companies' ability to provide services to historically underserved populations? How will they impact Hazel?

"If you take adults off of Medicaid, you will take kids off of Medicaid — period, full stop. The game we're playing as a country is super dangerous.

We don't do a lot of benefit work today, but one of the things I'm thinking about is: What is the right partnership model to do benefit work so that we can help people get re-enrolled as they go through this process?"

How does this new role align with your overarching mission in health care?

"The secret sauce in the early days of Cityblock is we engaged with populations that otherwise hadn't been engaged by the health care system. 

As I stepped away from that, I was curious: Where are the places you can think about engagement and distribution with access to much larger populations? How do you build tools with which you can engage millions of folks and become the gateway to a broader set of services? That led me to schools."

"Schools are on the front lines of a mental health crisis. They're begging for services to be delivered through them, and it's entirely bipartisan. There's never a question anywhere that these are services kids need. 

The vast majority of the kids we work with don't have a baseline mental health provider. They're receiving services for the first time.

The next phase is scaling and engaging kids in a tech-first way. For example, we're experimenting with AI to better identify kids that are falling through the gaps, or show children's progress to a school district."

How do you balance engaging kids in a tech-first way with concerns about screen time?

"The answer can't just be layering in more screens. At the same time, that's where kids are engaging today.

Our next phase has to be thinking about building more asynchronous opportunities and ways to access content and services."

Iyah Romm talks joining Hazel Health as CEO and Little Otter merger

CEO Romm says he expects "similar acquisitions over time."

Photo illustration of Iyah Romm next to colorful rectangles and a pattern of Hazel Health logos.

Photo illustration: Axios Visuals. Photo: Courtesy of Hazel Health

Iyah Romm, former Cityblock Health CEO, has taken the top job at pediatric health startup Hazel Health, he tells Axios Pro exclusively.Why it matters: Hazel just merged with family telemental health company Little Otter, and Romm says he expects &quot;similar acquisitions over time.&quot;

Iyah Romm talks joining Hazel Health as CEO and Little Otter merger

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