Sera Prognostics Appoints Woodrow Myers, Md, Mba As Advisor Of Public And Political Affairs
– Dr. Myers to support Sera’s commitment to reduce healthcare disparities among underserved communities –
Salt Lake City, Nov. 4, 2021 (PR NEWSWIRE) —Sera Prognostics Inc., The Pregnancy Company™ (NASDAQ: SERA), focused on improving maternal and neonatal health by providing innovative pregnancy biomarker information to doctors and patients, today announced that Woodrow Myers, M.D., M.B.A., joins Sera as an advisor focusing on public and political affairs. Dr. Myers will work on a multi-disciplinary effort to execute a national and state-specific political and public affairs strategy focused on Health Equity and Disparities related to pregnancy and parturition, further emphasizing the Company’s efforts to help address the healthcare disparities that disproportionately affect underserved communities.
“We are honored to have Dr. Myers join the Sera Prognostics team, bringing his extensive experience and leadership in addressing health equity and disparities,” said Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D., M.S., Chairman, and CEO of Sera Prognostics. “Dr. Myers has coupled his passion for the highest standards of patient care and management with leadership roles in several of our largest and most innovative healthcare enterprises.”
Dr. Myers is a nationally recognized leader in developing medical quality initiatives and advanced healthcare management programs. He serves as National Health Policy Advisor for the Wellness and Equity Alliance. Dr. Myers is on the boards of Personalis, Inc. (NASDAQ: PSNL), Freespira Inc., and the Public Health Policy Committee of eHealth Inc. (NASDAQ: EHTH). He has also served as Chief Medical Officer and Chief Healthcare Strategist for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, Chief Executive Officer for Valitàs Health Services (Corizon Health), and consultant to the California Endowment. In addition, Dr. Myers has served on multiple public, private, and nonprofit boards, including Express Scripts, Genomic Health, LipoScience, and SynGen. In higher education, he served on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University, the Board of Overseers of Harvard University, and the Board of Trustees of the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.
“I am excited to work with the team at Sera Prognostics who share my commitment to improving the quality, availability, and efficiency of healthcare around the globe,” said Dr. Myers. “I am looking forward to utilizing my passion for innovation and technology upgrades that will improve healthcare delivery and human longevity.”
About Sera Prognostics, Inc.
Sera Prognostics is a leading health diagnostics company dedicated to improving the lives of women and babies through precision pregnancy care. Sera’s mission is to deliver early, pivotal information in pregnancy to physicians, enabling them to improve the health of their patients, resulting in reductions in the costs of healthcare delivery. Sera has a robust pipeline of innovative diagnostic tests focused on the early prediction of preterm birth risk and other complications of pregnancy. Sera’s precision medicine PreTRM® test reports to a physician the individualized risk of spontaneous premature delivery in a pregnancy, enabling earlier proactive interventions in women with higher risk. Sera Prognostics is located in Salt Lake City, Utah.
About Preterm Birth
Preterm birth is defined as any birth before 37 weeks’ gestation and is the leading cause of illness and death in newborns. The 2020 March of Dimes Report Card shows that of approximately 3.8 million babies born annually in the United States, more than one in ten is born prematurely. Prematurity is associated with a significantly increased risk of major long-term medical complications, including learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, chronic respiratory illness, intellectual disability, seizures, and vision and hearing loss, and can generate significant costs throughout the lives of affected children. The annual health care costs to manage short- and long-term complications of prematurity in the United States were estimated to be approximately $25 billion for 2016.
About the PreTRM® Test
The PreTRM® test is the only broadly clinically validated, commercially available blood-based biomarker test that provides an early, accurate and individualized risk prediction for spontaneous preterm birth in asymptomatic singleton pregnancies. The PreTRM® test measures and analyzes proteins in the blood that are highly predictive of preterm birth. The PreTRM® test empowers physicians to better identify, during the 19th or 20th week of pregnancy, women are at increased risk for preterm birth, enabling more informed, personalized clinical decisions based on each woman’s individual risk. The PreTRM® test is ordered by a medical professional.
Sera Prognostics, the Sera Prognostics logo, The Pregnancy Company, and PreTRM are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sera Prognostics, Inc in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements relating to the Company’s efforts to help address the healthcare disparities that disproportionately affect underserved communities; improving the quality, availability, and efficiency of healthcare around the globe and improving healthcare delivery and human longevity; and the company’s strategic directives under the caption “About Sera Prognostics, Inc.” These “forward-looking statements” are based on management’s current expectations of future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: net losses, cash generation, and the potential need to raise more capital; revenues from the PreTRM test representing substantially all Company revenues to date; the need for broad scientific and market acceptance of the PreTRM test; a concentrated number of material customers; our ability to introduce new products; potential competition; our proprietary biobank; critical suppliers; the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our operations, as well as the business or operations of third parties with whom we conduct business; estimates of total addressable market opportunity and forecasts of market growth; potential third-party payer coverage and reimbursement; new reimbursement methodologies applicable to the PreTRM test, including new CPT codes and payment rates for those codes; changes in FDA regulation of laboratory-developed tests; the intellectual property rights protecting our tests and market position; and other factors discussed under the heading “Risk Factors” contained in our Final Prospectus on Form S-1, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 14, 2021, as well as any updates to those risk factors filed from time to time in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K, or Current Reports on Form 8-K. All information in this press release is as of the date of the release, and the Company undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law.
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