One benefit, every life stage: How Arkansas Children’s Hospital simplified women’s and family health support

The challenge

As the only children’s hospital in the state, Arkansas Children’s Hospital is dedicated to caring for families. As they began to hire more early career nurses, and supported a staff that is 85% female, leadership knew their benefits needed to reflect their demographic’s needs, too.

The organization saw rising demand for family-planning support, said Crystal Kohanke, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer of ACH. The hospital began looking for benefits beyond what was offered through the standard Blue Cross Blue Shield medical plan and their Employee Assistance Program.

“We have really embraced how we support a young growing family,” Kohanke said. “We still have a nice mix of team members across all ages, but we’re heavily recruiting new nurse grads — they’re younger, and we were seeing an increase in the things around family planning.”

Kohanke looked for feedback from employees on Maven: their working moms ERG was enthusiastic about what was offered.

“[The working moms ERG is] very active and they give us a lot of feedback on our different programs. And when [Maven] came up as an opportunity, we shared it with them and said, ‘Would this be something that would be helpful?’ And they said, ‘Absolutely.’ So that was the catalyst of how we got here,” Kohanke shared.

Before rolling the benefit out broadly, Arkansas Children’s piloted Maven with a small group of employees at different life stages — someone pregnant, a brand-new parent, and someone navigating menopause.

“[Each person] said, ‘We need this. I didn’t even know I needed this,’” Kohanke said. “Women aren’t going to ask for this — we just don’t talk about this stuff. But after people use it, the response has been monumental.”

Arkansas Children’s partnered with Maven in 2025 to bring Fertility & Family Building, Maternity & Newborn Care, Parenting & Pediatrics, and Menopause & Midlife Health together under a single benefit, with Maven Wallet, which covers medical and non-medical costs for doulas, adoption, surrogacy, and more.

Kohanke said it was important that Maven deliver not just on ROI, but on ensuring their workers felt supported with their wellbeing. They also wanted a platform that could support not only the younger female population the hospital was recruiting, but all staff members at every life stage.

“It was really a wellness focus,” Kohanke said. “It was really about providing more support around total wellbeing. What we liked about Maven [was that] our male team members could also participate, and because we were so heavily female, we thought it would be a really great opportunity for people to take advantage of the different programs, regardless of where they were in their life cycle.”

The solution

For a workforce used to juggling separate, capped point solutions — a handful of mental health visits here, a fertility allowance there — Maven’s comprehensive care helped support employees, and the benefits team, too. Maven drives 2:1 clinical ROI through improved outcomes and lower costs for members, as well as a 4:1 business ROI when factoring in improved productivity and return-to-work rates.

“[Maven] was attractive because it was so comprehensive,” Kohanke said. “I’ll have an appointment with a nutritionist because I’m menopausal, and then I’ll get on a call with someone who has a toddler and needs guidance on a behavioral issue. It’s super flexible — it offers a variety of options for all different needs, and it lets me have that continuity with the same provider if I want it.”

That flexibility mattered even more given how Arkansas Children’s employees actually work. “Our team members don’t sit behind a desk. Most of them are taking care of patients,” Kohanke said. “Having the ability to get support when you need it, however you want it — whether that’s a weekday evening or a weekend — is really important. We consider that for all our benefits, knowing our people can’t be at a computer all day.”

The results

Since launching, Arkansas Children’s has seen strong engagement with Maven, including 161 enrollments into Menopause & Midlife Health, 140 into Parenting & Pediatrics, 66 into Fertility & Family Building, and 59 in Maternity & Newborn Care. As of August, 2026, members have had more than 18.5k interactions with self-guided content through the app, as well as 1.5k interactions with a member of Maven’s care team.

Beyond usage numbers, the benefits team has watched Maven change the way employees — and leaders — talk about their own health. Utilization of the platform has spread by word of mouth; employees discuss it openly in the breakroom, enabling other team members to learn more about the offerings holistically.

“We’ll hear someone say, ‘Have you tried Maven?’ because they don’t know you can just call them and say, ‘I need help, I’m having this behavioral opportunity with my little one,’” Kohanke said. “It’s really widespread.”

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with employees sharing their experiences across the full spectrum of care.

“She went above and beyond to help me,” said one employee who engaged with a physical support coach through the Maternity & Newborn Care program. “She helped me get to the root of the problem with my pelvic floor issues. She is very knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly! She was lovely to chat with and I would love to see her again.”

An employee engaging with the menopause program shared that using Maven was an “amazing experience”:

“When I shared the problem with my health, I felt heard and was given next steps that are specialized to solve the problem. It felt really great.”

Kohanke has been candid about using the benefit herself — including through Maven’s Menopause & Midlife Health program.

“I’ve done everything from talking to a clinician to getting physical therapy,” she said. “I didn’t know I was doing exercises wrong until I made an appointment. All these years, and now I finally understand what’s supposed to be happening.”

That openness is deliberate. “My hope is that other people will think, maybe it’s OK to talk about this,” Kohanke said. “I want to de-stigmatize it, because we’re almost all women here. And we’re a healthcare organization — if we can’t do it, how do we expect everybody else to have the language for it?”