Zócalo Health Raises $15M in Series A Funding

The funding brings the total raised to $22.75 million, and the company plans to use it to expand nationwide, grow its community-based workforce, and strengthen partnerships with health plans.

Funding comes as health plans face pressure to manage a small group of members who account for a large share of healthcare costs. These patients often have complex medical, behavioral, and social needs and are hard to engage in care. Zócalo Health focuses on this group by combining community-based care teams with virtual services to improve engagement, outcomes, and overall cost of care.

Zócalo Health delivers strong results by organizing care around community health workers who are part of the communities they serve. These teams work closely with primary care doctors, behavioral health specialists and care coordinators to stay connected with patients beyond traditional clinic visits. Behavioral health is a key part of the model, with screening, coordination and ongoing support built into care, ensuring patients’ mental, medical and social needs are addressed together from the start.

Zócalo Health combines strong community relationships with a technology platform that supports smooth care delivery. The platform uses AI to help frontline teams work more efficiently, allowing them to serve more patients without lowering quality, while also making it easier for patients to access care and local resources.

It also gives members better visibility into their insurance coverage and eligibility helping them understand their benefits. The platform works with community health workers to guide patients through Medicaid renewals and changes in eligibility requirements.

Zócalo Health works with Medicaid health plans, such as Anthem Blue Cross and Health Net, to deliver care aligned with state programs, such as CalAIM in California. These efforts are helping create a new model for community-based, whole-person care that could expand to other states over time.

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"Health plans are under pressure to deliver quality care for their most complex members, even as budgets tighten, said Mariza Hardin, Co Founder of Zócalo Health. "We have built a model that meets that challenge directly. This next phase is about scaling with discipline while maintaining both stellar performance, and our deeply personal, community driven touch."

"We built Zócalo Health to engage the patients the system misses consistently," said Erik Cardenas, Co Founder and CEO. "Our model is designed around sustained engagement, and outcomes. When you connect and engage RSS high-need members, you change both clinical outcomes and cost."

"Zócalo Health has built a care model that performs in one of the most complex segments of healthcare," said Roland Fryer, Founding Partner of EO Ventures and Harvard Professor of Economics. "It is demonstrating that community-based care, paired with the right operating model, can scale and deliver meaningful results."

About Zócalo Health

Founded in 2021, by Erik and Mariza, Zócalo Health is a primary care provider focused on underserved communities. It offers integrated medical, behavioral and social care, and works with health plans to engage high need patients, improve outcomes, and lower overall costs using community health workers and technology.

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