Social care is a complex and rapidly changing landscape. Many people across the US have unmanaged medical conditions, face challenging social and personal barriers, and have fallen through the cracks despite the massive investments that healthcare organizations and government agencies have made in people, technology, and outreach. 

The Cost of Falling Through the Cracks

• + 59% total cost of care
• + 79% inpatient hospital admissions
• + 100% emergency department visits

Source: 2022 Impact Report

People with the most challenging social and healthcare needs usually reach out to the organizations and community groups they trust the most. Being able to request support in a secure, reliable, and efficient way makes sure those individuals can access the services and support they need, no matter which door they open.

The Power of an Assistance Request Form

That’s where Unite Us comes in. We partner with provider, health plan, government, and nonprofit organizations across the nation to launch Assistance Request Forms (ARF) that help individuals get connected to social care. 

How It Works

An Assistance Request Form is a public-facing form that enables people to quickly request the services they need, such as food support, housing, or employment assistance. In the form, they can securely share their own or a family member’s basic contact information in addition to the type of need, a short description of the need,  and their consent for this information to be shared with a secure network of providers who can help. The ARF is available in 35 languages to ensure that people can get connected to the care they need as seamlessly as possible.  

After the ARF is submitted, there are two options for what happens next: 

1. Direct response from community-based organizations (CBOs) – If CBOs on the Unite Us Platform have opted to directly respond to ARFs, then the submission will be sent to a recipient organization’s dashboard. At the receiving organization, the relevant users will be notified of the inbound requests for services, and they can reach out to the person directly to provide support.
2. Support from Unite Us Care Coordination Team – Another option that organizations can take is to loop in the Unite Us Care Coordination team. The Unite Us Care Coordination team serves as social care coordinators by identifying and executing appropriate client referrals, taking the onus off of in-house organization administrators. The Care Coordination team will reach out to the person who submitted the ARF form to gather more information as needed, and send a referral through the Unite Us Platform to a local organization that can help. 

Ultimately, in both scenarios, the person who submitted the ARF is seamlessly and securely connected to the care they need. 

Get Started 

Interested in learning more about how Assistance Request Forms can further your SDoH strategy? Request a demo to get started today. 

Request a demo

The post The Power of Assistance Request Forms in Connecting People to Social Care appeared first on uniteus.com.

A critical social barrier to quality education and health is adequate nutrition and access to food. School lunch programs may have gone in and out of favor over the years, but they are incredibly effective at increasing food security for school-aged children. With growing awareness of the importance of social care in overall health, it’s time to recognize school lunch programs as essential to a healthy curriculum.  

Challenges with Food Assistance for School-Aged Children

While six states have taken action to make school meals free to all students regardless of income, the process of receiving free meals is much more complicated for the vast majority of low-income American families. 

Families that do not already receive SNAP benefits must apply through their school to determine whether their household is eligible for free or reduced-price school meals. To be eligible, family income must fall well below the poverty line. This leaves a significant number of families who are not “poor” enough to qualify, but not “well-off” enough to feel food secure and provide their children with adequate food while at school. 

For many families already facing other difficult societal changes—such as the rising costs of groceries and fuel—this gap represents another significant burden. The application and enrollment process is also time consuming and challenging. Typically, families need the support of a busy school staff member to help with the submission of their application.  

Programs such as the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) can help high-poverty schools and districts offer school meals at no cost to enrolled students without family applications. But such support is not available to every school, district, or family in need. 

Schools are also challenged by the same supply chain obstacles and rising cost issues that almost every organization faces today. When traditional food supplies are not available, schools must still provide meals that meet USDA meal requirements or face fines, even though substitutions are often more costly.  

A New Call to Meet Health and Social Needs Through School Lunch Programs

 Why are universal school lunch programs so important?

Access to well-balanced, nutritious meals has a direct impact on a child’s ability to focus in school. School lunch programs provide reliability and consistency in a child’s life, especially when they come from insecure, challenging, or disadvantaged circumstances. When school meals are available to all, the stigma associated with receiving food assistance is reduced. 

Kids and their families have so much to worry about these days—food shouldn’t be one of them. 

In recognition of this reality, the Biden Administration hosted the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in 2022. 

This was the first time such a program has been held since 1969. The conference addressed challenges in the nation’s food system that are leading to food insecurity, chronic hunger, nutrition and health inequities, and the rise of diet-related chronic disease. Such challenges cost the nation hundreds of billions of dollars every year in preventable healthcare spending. 

The program focuses on five pillars with concrete steps to meet the associated barriers: 

• Improving food access and affordability
• Integrating nutrition and health
• Empowering all consumers with access to healthy choices
• Supporting physical activity for all
• Enhancing nutrition and food security research 

Building on these efforts, the Biden-Harris Administration launched the White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities, a nationwide call to action for organizations across the country to make commitments to ending hunger and reducing diet-related diseases by 2030. Since its launch, a number of organizations have already stepped up to participate in the Challenge by announcing new commitments.

Technology Can Connect School Children and Families to Support

 School lunch programs can play a central role in social care that ultimately reduces healthcare spending and improves population health. When students are healthier, supported, and food secure, they are also more likely to be attentive and more engaged in the classroom. Teachers, administrators, families, communities, and—most importantly—students all win. 

 But school lunch programs also highlight the opportunity that schools represent to make other health and social care services more accessible. These include needs around mental health, substance use disorders, housing insecurity, and transportation. 

 By integrating schools within broader community health and social care networks, social service providers and organizations can help children thrive at school and at home, while offering crucial support to families and school staff.

Learn more on how to increase your impact. Access our flyer to learn how joining a network of coordinated care can help your organization connect students and their families to the care they need.

Access the Flyer

The post Back to School: How School Lunch Programs are Keeping Kids Fed appeared first on uniteus.com.

Access to nutritious food has been a complex challenge for many communities for many years.

While demand soared during the pandemic, food banks struggled to manage disrupted supply chains and put new safety processes in place, further limiting their ability to meet the growing needs of their community.

As the pandemic receded, inflation promptly showed up, putting more burden on people already struggling with returning to work, caring for children and the elderly, and paying for essentials like rent, electricity, gas, and food. 

While demand remains high, food donations are also down, further hindered by a reduction in pandemic-related emergency assistance for food, shelter, rent, healthcare, and childcare—many of which are scheduled to end this month in states across the U.S. Reductions in emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, the government’s largest anti-hunger program, and a likely tightening of Medicaid enrollment qualifications are just some of the few barriers that will prevent individuals from accessing the healthy food they need to live comfortably in the coming months.  

Though challenging, the past few years have fortunately generated important opportunities for organizations to learn more about how to best support people in need of food assistance. While an increasing number of food assistance organizations are now actively seeking out opportunities to leverage data that identifies supply and demand, others have also made an intentional effort to strengthen their network of partnerships to address food insecurity at scale. 

The Critical Role of Food Banks and Food Assistance Organizations

In its most basic form, a food bank is a not-for-profit charitable organization that collects food and distributes it to other charitable organizations such as food pantries, soup kitchens, libraries, and faith-based groups. Serving as a frontline organization in many communities, food banks help feed people struggling with hunger or access to healthy food, often operating as warehouses and deploying trucking fleets to make that happen.

Food banks rely largely on donors for their funding and the food they distribute, and on volunteers for their day-to-day operations. Food often comes from grocery stores and restaurants that donate excess food or food nearing its sell-by date, and even from farmers who want to offload food that can’t be sold in grocery stores because of its appearance. To supplement their supply, food banks may run food drives for local community members to donate food and other supplies.

Today, according to an Urban Institute study, one in six adults may rely on charitable organizations for food, which is still higher than pre-pandemic levels. Adults with children are 50 percent more likely to need charitable food. Due to social, economic, and environmental challenges, Black and Hispanic people are three times more likely than White people to use food pantries. As a result of this growing demand, many social services organizations and food pantries are often forced to scramble in arranging for food donations, food deliveries, and distribution. 

To build healthier communities, we need to go one step further. 

Adjusting Through Innovation and Outreach

The number of people who access food from food assistance organizations went up during the pandemic and hasn’t gone down since, posing a huge operational challenge for charitable food organizations. Strapped by limited supply, donor fatigue, unstable funding, and persistent demand, many organizations are seeking new ways to adapt to this ever-changing landscape.

For many organizations, the evolving landscape has required modernizing their operations and investing in new technology. For others, it means expanding their networks of community partners to help source and distribute food more effectively. 

Today, according to McKinsey, food banks are using strategies from for-profit distributors to optimize their warehouses and make them more efficient and cost effective. They’re also using analytics to better assess demand by looking at social factors like unemployment numbers, inflation, and poverty levels. 

These new tactics have helped lay a solid foundation for helping mitigate hunger in communities across the U.S. while also addressing the underlying problems that exacerbate it. 

Shortening The Line Through Community Collaboration

Though food banks have traditionally served as emergency options to alleviate hunger for those in need, some have now have shifted their focus to how quality food can help meet the co-occurring needs of people and communities struggling not only with hunger but also chronic illness, obesity, economic hardship, and other social challenges.

By helping those people connect to services that provide job training, financial assistance, in-school support, transportation, and more, food banks and food assistance organizations can help their clients become better equipped to also overcome food insecurity. Food banks are important partners in improving whole-population health and health for all. 

So how can food organizations connect to community-based organizations that meet needs beyond food? And how can community-based organizations supporting people with shelter, heat assistance, legal services, benefits navigation, chronic disease management, and so on connect to the right food assistance organizations?

Here are four strategies:

• Adopt collaborative software to start securely receiving referrals from social and healthcare organizations not typically a part of food distribution.
• Experiment with innovative partnerships across sectors that account for differences in geography and need.
• Collaborate to implement innovative delivery models that scale impact while creating consistency in the community.
• Conduct research to evaluate the impact of interventions that address root causes of food insecurity such as homelessness and unemployment.

Thinking Beyond Food

Unite Us plays an impactful role in identifying people in need and sharing standardized insights securely and at scale across many social services and healthcare organizations, including food banks. We know food insecurity always goes hand in hand with other social needs like access to housing and healthcare. In meeting the needs of the food insecure, it’s time to think beyond food. 

Breaking down silos that prevent community members from accessing vital resources such as nutritious food, our networks operate as hubs for the kind of collaboration and exchange needed to enable community-based organizations of all kinds to take an active role in directly connecting their clients to food assistance and other holistic needs. 

If an organization doesn’t provide food assistance, it can easily refer clients through the Unite Us Platform to organizations that do. In turn, a food assistance organization can help their clients gain access to other critical services and support through the same network, increasing accountability and trust between organizations and with the clients they serve. 

As one partner shared:

“Food Bank for the Heartland helps so many Nebraskans apply for SNAP benefits. Most often, it is not just SNAP they need assistance with; they often ask for utility, rent, food pantries, anything that will help them get by. I am so glad this new referral system has started. It is another way clients can make contact with an agency without having to do all the legwork themselves or retelling their story over and over again. Our neighbors are exhausted, and having this referral system is one way they can get a little relief.” – Natalie Nelson, MSW, Food Bank for the Heartland SNAP Direct Service Manager

Complex problems require holistic solutions. By bringing organizations together around the multiple challenges of an individual in need, we have an opportunity to address all of their needs and build healthier communities for all. 

Putting Partnership into Practice

We recently had the opportunity to interview our partner Feeding Tampa Bay about their experience working with Unite Us to connect the dots in their community. Chief Programs Officer Matt Spence shed some light on the importance of addressing drivers of health, the benefits of making the most of every interaction, and how we all play a role in connecting people to the care they need when they need it most.

Q: With 80 percent of health outcomes determined by drivers of health, social care has never been more important. What do you think are common misconceptions about the importance of addressing drivers of health?

A: I think we tend to separate in our mind something that is a health issue from something that affects the rest of your life. And we know that there’s a lot of interactivity there. We know that, if you have poor mental health, that affects your food security; that affects your ability to be an effective employee; that affects your ability to be an effective student. All of those other stressors can build up and actually create health issues on the other side as well. So, it’s really a bidirectional relationship.

Q: Can you explain how your organization is working hard to help individuals with more than just food?

A: More people will touch social services through the food-relief system than any other methodology. And so what we’ve been trying to do as a food bank over the last five years is do a better job of taking advantage of that interaction. If somebody comes to us for food, there’s something else going on—that’s not the only thing going on in their life. And so that’s why we created a job training program. That’s why we’ve built out these types of solutions. That’s why we have a daily meal; that’s why we have nutrition education programs and financial stability work. All of these pieces fit together to create exit velocity for our neighbors. That’s really the goal. Not only are we feeding people who are in the line, but we’re also shortening the line, making sure that people don’t have to come back.

Q: Can you share how your organization’s impact and processes have changed since joining the network and using the Unite Us Platform to help community members address health and social needs?

A: System navigation is a huge challenge because our social service system is not designed with the biggest needs of the guests in mind. It is designed for the perspective of the employees and for the system. In order to truly navigate, if you have multiple issues going on, you’re going to multiple locations—you’re telling your story over and over again. If it’s traumatic, you’re re-traumatizing yourself again and again. And you are putting up all of these barriers of time, of travel. You know, you can’t be at work if you’re navigating the social service system. And so having the Unite Us Platform that knits everything together far more tightly shortens that traumatic time for the individual. It ensures that, when someone enters the system, there is a way to follow them through the successful completion. It’s incredibly important for us because, before Unite Us, it was really ‘call and hope.’ You make a phone call and hopefully you know the right organization; hopefully you know the person within the organization who’s going to be responsive; and then you send off this person who’s coming to you to ask for help, and you hope it works out. But now we can follow up. Now we can ensure that that connection was made or that challenge was addressed—that the person can go forward.

Q: How do you ensure people receive the help they need when they need it most?

A: Closing the loop is so important. My favorite thing about Unite Us is that we can actually check to make sure that the person who came to us to ask for help is getting the help they need, even if we’re not the ones delivering it. That person said, ‘Feeding Tampa Bay can help me,’ and it’s our responsibility to make sure we actually do. Giving somebody a business card is not it. We’re not in this world if we don’t care about the people who come to us, so we want to make sure that what we’re doing is working.

Want to help others learn more about the services your organization can provide? Interested in connecting to other community-based organizations to see all your clients’ service needs addressed? Join a network and start receiving referrals from all kinds of organizations in your community—including hospitals, shelters, churches, schools, and even your local salon.

Together, we can unlock the potential of every community.

Learn How it Works

The post How Food Banks Can Expand Their Reach and Impact Through Cross-Sector Collaboration appeared first on uniteus.com.

Health disparities among New Yorkers are significant, persistent, and increasing. Public Health Solutions (PHS) works to change that trajectory and supports New York City families to achieve optimal health and build pathways to reach their potential. PHS provides direct services to families, supports community-based organizations through our long-standing public-private partnerships, and bridges the gap between healthcare and community services. PHS and Unite Us partner on WholeYouNYC, a city-wide, trustworthy, and reliable community resource network that connects healthcare and social services.

One Client’s Story

When we hear the phrase “food insecurity,” we don’t immediately connect it to cancer. “Hector’s” story, however, illuminates a common scenario that many community members face when receiving treatment for cancer. Through our partnership with PHS, New York City’s largest public health nonprofit, Hector (not his real name), along with thousands of others, are receiving the services they need through a difficult period in their lives.

The medical provider that treated Hector’s cancer referred Hector and his partner to PHS’s WholeYouNYC. Because Hector was the primary earner in the household and was unable to work while recovering, he and his partner were hoping they could receive supplemental food and nutrition benefits to help tide them over during this time.

During the screening conversation with Hector, one of PHS’ Food Navigators determined that the couple was eligible to receive medically tailored, home-delivered meals and SNAP benefits. A PHS network partner confirmed through Unite Us that he was eligible and enrolled Hector to receive their services. The following week, during his first rounds of chemotherapy, three nutritious meals a day were delivered to their home.

PHS’ SNAP enrollment program was also busy at work on the couple’s SNAP benefits application. Thanks to a quick turnaround and thorough application completion, Hector and his partner were rapidly approved to receive monthly SNAP benefits.

Going through a health crisis like cancer is extremely difficult, and when clients and families are concerned about paying rent and putting food on the table, the stress escalates. Being able to lift the family’s burden and improve Hector’s health was enormously gratifying for PHS’ team.

Last year, because of hundreds of new enrollments in SNAP benefits, Home Delivered Meals, and Diabetes Self-Management programs, PHS estimates that WholeYouNYC achieved $2.8M in healthcare savings through its network of food and nutrition services providers.

Cross-Sector Collaboration Across New York City

WholeYouNYC has the potential to revolutionize community health and improve the lives of millions of New Yorkers. This diverse network creates new healthcare, community, and public access points to community-based resources across the city that help New Yorkers resolve their unmet, health-related social needs. WholeYouNYC couples the power of Unite Us’ dynamic, collaborative software with PHS’ team of multilingual, culturally relevant community resource navigators to ensure people receive the right resources in the right place at the right time. Together, PHS and Unite Us partner with community-based organizations to build their capacity and secure new revenue streams for their work from healthcare providers, government, and philanthropy. 

For this series, we asked PHS about our work together and their vision of cross-sector collaboration to create lasting change across our country.

As we reflect on a decade bringing sectors together through technology to ensure people’s needs are met, what do you think has changed the most for your organization since the start of our partnership?

In recent years, COVID-19, inflation and migration have strained the capacity of nonprofit, community-based organizations and resulted in an unprecedented need for services. Simultaneously, how community services are provided has been radically transformed with the introduction of virtual services and the remote issuance of benefits. In this new environment, efficient coordination and real-time communication across sectors and partners is more essential than ever before. As a result, a PHS/Unite Us partnership that started out as a quality improvement project to better coordinate access to a narrowly prescribed set of resources has grown into a more comprehensive public health infrastructure development project.

How does PHS think about or approach collaboration with other sectors?

Since the launch of WholeYouNYC, we have fostered a collaborative design approach across sectors, ensuring that the people participating in the system have strong input into how it is developed and implemented and that they form the human connections that contribute to optimal success. Systems transformation cannot be successful without a focus on human-centered design. To set the table for success, PHS has convened collaborative design sessions at multiple levels, from small, neighborhood-level partnerships to citywide, policy-oriented convenings. As NYC’s public health anchor institution, PHS has the influence that is needed to bring together stakeholders from the community, healthcare, government, philanthropy, and the private sector to advance the work and ensure it contributes to a shared vision of health equity for NYC. 

What are the benefits of cross-sector collaboration to the individuals and families you serve?

The challenge to living a long and healthy life in NYC too often depends on whether a person lives in a safe neighborhood; experiences racism or discrimination; has access to medical care, food, and stable housing; or has adequate income, knowledge, and opportunities to make healthy choices. Additionally, despite spending $10,000 per person on healthcare for New York residents annually, our healthcare system fails to support a person’s health and well-being outside the four walls of medical care organizations.

This is in part because, when people are referred from healthcare organizations to social services providers, there is minimal follow-up to ensure they receive the help they need. Additionally,  thousands of social services and community resources are available throughout New York City; however, poor coordination between providers results in New Yorkers being unable to access the help they need—even when it exists in their own backyard. These disjointed systems burden people with locating their own care, engaging with multiple agencies, and enduring a time-consuming process of coordinating various resources. As a result, New Yorkers continue to experience some of the worst health outcomes in the United States, despite numerous systems already in place to support good health.

WholeYouNYC aims to solve these problems and improve health equity by placing people at the center of care and connecting them with a network of resources to address their unmet needs. We have connected over 500 organizations that offer more than 800 programs across all New York City boroughs, including food, housing, employment, legal aid, youth training and development, health insurance, maternal support, sexual health services, and more.

Are there any upcoming programs or initiatives related to drivers of health and community health at PHS that you are excited about?

We are excited about adding the city’s new “Groceries to Go” initiative to our portfolio addressing food insecurity. Groceries to Go provides eligible New Yorkers with monthly credits to purchase groceries for delivery or pickup. Credits can be used to purchase SNAP-eligible foods and beverages through an online platform that links to hundreds of grocery stores in New York City. The credits can also be used to pay for service fees, tips, and delivery. Groceries to Go participants also receive a 50-percent discount on purchases of fresh fruits and vegetables using their credits. Participants can save up to $30 per month with this discount. There is tremendous potential to impact food insecurity when we combine this offering alongside SNAP enrollment and other food and nutrition services.

Looking another 10 years into the future, what is your biggest hope for cross-sector collaboration to improve community health?

Our biggest hope is that New Yorkers feel they have a health and human services system that recognizes their unique challenges—one they can trust in times of need. This is foundational to health equity. We hope that WholeYouNYC at scale results in a more accessible, coordinated, and accountable system of community care. We are committed to successfully leveraging what we learn in the data-driven insights provided by Unite Us to fill critical gaps in services and advocate for service expansions, enhancements, and improvements that will be essential to ongoing sustainability and success.  

What thoughts would you share with the Unite Us team as they look out on the next 10 years?

A network is only as good as its people, and the nonprofit sector is increasingly strained. Unite Us leadership can help by providing secure insights and technical support to organizations as they grow their capacity and work to secure meaningful new sources of revenue. The platform can be a powerful tool in addressing the “wrong pocket” problem, where large healthcare providers reap healthcare quality incentive payments based on outcomes achieved by community-based organizations and low-cost community healthcare providers. Unite Us can support organizations to apply these insights to more effectively prove their value and achieve a greater share of value-based care incentives. The Unite Us Platform can be used to make a compelling case when it identifies unmet needs in the community and barriers to care for populations of interest to policymakers. This data can be amplified to secure policy wins and drive investment to where it is most needed. 

For more information about Public Health Solutions, follow @wearephsny on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; or visit HealthSolutions.org.

Learn more about how to bring Unite Us to your organization: 

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The post Better Together: Uniting NYC to Address Nutrition and Beyond appeared first on uniteus.com.

It should come as no surprise that rural communities face unique health and social challenges—from the extra distance to hospitals and clinics to a lack of sustainable funding for healthcare and social programs and higher overall rates of chronic conditions. 

But small towns, farming communities, and other rural areas are places where neighbors know each other well and have a strong tradition of pitching in with help and support for those in need. Local organizations like food banks, churches, shelters, and a variety of third places—where people spend time between home and work—bring more services to the table while strengthening connection and community.

When community leaders and organizations come together in natural networks or informal partnerships, they can leverage their collective community knowledge and help reduce or overcome the barriers to better health and well-being in a way that no traditional network can. Their efforts and impact can be further enhanced with local care navigators and robust data and communication platforms that connect community-based organizations and services to people in need. 

A Community Partnership in Action

In the video below, a community farm in upstate New York has become a center for agricultural education, food production, and therapeutic recreation, connecting local social service organizations to the larger food system. Unite Us’ collaborative software enables Pitney Meadows Community Farm to amplify its contribution to Saratoga County’s health and well-being by facilitating community partnerships that support people in need. 

The Pitney family owned this 166-acre farm for three generations. To preserve it, they sold the property to a non-profit in 2016. Now, it serves as a community farm for nearby Saratoga Springs and the surrounding area. 

Lynn Trizna at Pitney Meadows Community Farm says, “For us, focusing on our strength in producing healthy, fresh produce is great because then we can rely on the Unite Us Platform to learn more about the individual in need, and say, ‘Hey, we know some really great organizations that can provide this food to you.’ Because realistically, Pitney Meadows can’t be everything. We can’t be a senior center, we can’t be a health center. But we have great community partners that can offer those services.” 

Healthy Alliance, an Independent Physician Association, facilitates those community partners through its network of organizations across New York state. Unite Us powers the Alliance’s referral network to connect over 580 organizations, ranging from regional hospitals to local schools and food pantries, so all communities have reliable access to needed resources that promote health and empower the underserved.

One of those partner organizations is the Saratoga Community Health Center, which provides integrated care to under-insured members of the local community. Many of those patients struggle with drivers of health including healthy nutrition in a region where food insecurity runs an average of eight percent. The Center’s Medical Director, Dr. Renee Rodriguez-Goodemote, says, “Healthy nutrition is outside the reach of many people. We’ve done group visits to Pitney with our patients. We’ve helped to plant garden beds, and that’s really given our patients an experience of the soil and growing something from seed and looking at where our nutrition comes from. And we’ve also had the benefit of their shared agriculture bags every week which are part of our Medical Education and Nutrition RX program.”

Another organization, Shelters of Saratoga, which provides support, shelter, and housing, also relies on Pitney Farms for food bags and brings guests to the farm to help with the harvest. Associate Executive Director Stephanie Romeo relies on the Unite Us Platform to facilitate referrals to the shelter for people who need emergency housing and to connect the shelter to other organizations and resources in the community. 

Daniel Williams, Pitney’s Food Sovereignty Coordinator, knows that the network makes access to better health possible. “We can grow the food and we can distribute it. But working with these other organizations helps people navigate all the other health issues that come with having poor access to food. The network is really necessary to having a sustainable food system here in Saratoga.”

Dr. Rodriguez-Goodemote agrees. “It’s more powerful than any pill I can prescribe.”

How Unite Us Supports Natural Networks in Rural Communities

Rural communities often have their own system in place for connecting individuals in need to services and help in their community. It takes time and local knowledge for outside organizations to build trust and chip in with meaningful support.

At Unite Us, our goal is not to replace these networks but to help partners find each other, work together more securely, and streamline their processes to ensure no one slips through the cracks. We work hard to understand the needs and nuances of each unique community, and then use our technology to complement rather than compete with local efforts. 

Through the Unite Us Platform, organizations can:

• Work more easily with community partners to connect individuals to services inside and outside of their community.
• Collaborate within the community to improve health literacy and advocate for health equity.
• Scale impact in a way that is sustainable and accounts for each organization’s particular needs.

No matter the ZIP code, we think everyone deserves access to what they need to thrive. For more information on how the Unite Us Platform can connect organizations in your community, please get in touch.

Get in Touch

The post From Farm to Tech: How One Farm Is Connecting Its Community to More Than Just Food appeared first on uniteus.com.

Our Power in Partnership series highlights our national and regional partners and the work they do to build healthier communities.

Tell us about your organization.

Giving Kitchen (GK) is a nonprofit organization that provides emergency assistance to food service workers through financial support and a network of community resources.

Giving Kitchen grew out of a response to the devastating, stage-four cancer diagnosis of Chef Ryan Hidinger in December 2012. The response to Ryan’s diagnosis — initially from friends within the restaurant industry, and then quickly from an ever-expanding community across Atlanta – was truly heroic: an outpouring of love and financial support to help with his expenses not covered by insurance.

The community’s overwhelming response to the Hidingers’ crisis set the intent, beliefs, and values for Giving Kitchen, which was officially founded in 2013.

Today, food service workers from restaurants, catering companies, concessions stands, cafeterias, food trucks, and tap rooms anywhere in the United States are eligible for direct support from Giving Kitchen, be that with financial assistance, referrals through Stability Network, or both.

What difficulties has your organization faced along the way?

Giving Kitchen is doing something for food service workers that hasn’t been done on this scale before. Building something new comes with challenges! How do we standardize a process for who and how we serve, in a way that is equitable, impactful, and scalable? How do we meet an industry-wide crisis like COVID-19 without throwing all our own guidelines out the window? How can we grow and change to meet our community where they are? These are questions we ask ourselves every day.

When COVID-19 prompted the shutdown of all food service in March 2020, GK Executive Director Bryan Schroeder made the difficult decision to maintain the qualifying crises for financial assistance — meaning that GK would not suddenly start paying unemployment to food service workers laid off due to the pandemic. “It just felt like it would have been a disaster for us,” he said. “That’s not our core mission. It wouldn’t be fair to the guy who broke his leg just before the pandemic.” To meet the demand of food service workers suddenly in need of resources, GK set up a webpage that included information on food banks, community initiatives, and how to obtain federal unemployment support; it was essentially a pandemic-specific Stability Network. The webpage received hundreds of thousands of hits.

During this time, Stability Network reevaluated standard operating procedures. Case managers began filtering inquiries and allowing clients to opt-in for one-on-one case management rather than having case management be the default, since there were so many clients and many requests were for a simple referral that had been shared hundreds of times before. There’s a saying in the restaurant industry: “work smarter, not harder.” Stability Network worked smarter so they could work harder to meet an exponential increase in inquiries; these systematic improvements helped set the stage for a partnership with Unite Us.

What are your thoughts on the state of food security in America?

Food insecurity has been a huge challenge for the food service industry in the U.S., especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Food banks, shelters, and private citizens stepped up in a big way to feed our communities when entire industries found themselves out of work indefinitely. But even with that onslaught of compassion and effort, what remained clear was that millions of people were living paycheck to paycheck and when that next paycheck disappeared, so did their access to basic necessities.

Why did you choose to partner with Unite Us?

Our partnership widens the network of resources for food service workers and allows GK case managers to monitor the value and efficacy of Stability Network partnerships for our clients.

“Our partnership with Unite Us has expanded our library of resources significantly, especially in rural areas. With this greater reach, we are better poised to support food-service workers regionally and nationally,” said Senior Stability Network Manager Kaitlynn Mockett.

What do you think has been Giving Kitchen’s most successful initiative?

We quantify success not in dollars given but in overall impact: preventing homelessness, supporting recovery from substance misuse, keeping a family’s utilities connected, and a million other ways to help food service workers feel safe and supported. Perhaps our most successful initiative is that we’ve continued to grow and serve more and more food service workers. The farther we expand and the more food service workers we serve, the more word gets out that Giving Kitchen is here to help food service workers. Our expansion has legitimized our work by proving to our communities that Giving Kitchen is here to help and here to stay.

How does collaborating with community-based organizations play a role in Giving Kitchen’s work?

Stability Network is, at its core, a collaboration with other community-based organizations. What separates GK’s Stability Network from other referral programs is the case management team. Stability Network case managers work closely with clients to find resources that fit their specific needs, and often provide direct referrals that give clients access to services that aren’t otherwise available or may be significantly more expensive without a referral from GK. Relationships with other organizations and independent providers are stewarded by case managers, whose personal mission is to make connections that improve the strength and resilience of our food service community.

What’s next for Giving Kitchen?

Our goal is to serve more and more food service workers who need us. From a recent study, we know that there are over a million food service businesses in the U.S. which collectively employ nearly 16 million people, and food service workers in the U.S. earn an average salary of $20,303 per year ($9.76 per hour). Of GK financial assistance recipients surveyed, 76% say that without help from Giving Kitchen, they would have received an eviction notice, 86% report aid from GK prevented them from incurring a late bill on a utility, and 70% say that GK prevented them from having to skip meals to save money. All of this tells us what we’ve known for years: food service workers, on average, do not have a financial safety net or a network of community resources to keep them afloat in an emergency. We want every food service worker in the U.S. to have a safety net — whether it be Giving Kitchen or another community-based organization — so a single crisis doesn’t compromise their entire livelihood.

For more information about Giving Kitchen, follow @givingkitchen on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; visit givingkitchen.org; or visit Giving Kitchen’s Press Room.

Interested in learning more about how community-based organizations are addressing social determinants of health or how to bring Unite Us to your community?

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The post Power in Partnership: Giving Kitchen appeared first on uniteus.com.

During the month of March, we are focusing on building healthier communities by bridging the gap in access to healthy food.

Over the past two years, our team has witnessed food assistance organizations across the country pivot creatively in response to the rapidly increasing needs of our community members. Feeding America estimates that in 2020, one in eight Americans were food insecure—over 38 million people. Many people experiencing food insecurity are also facing a variety of other challenges beyond the need for food. Inevitably, every community-based organization has experienced first-hand how food insecurity is often accompanied by other social needs, such as the need for adequate housing or employment.

The post Keep Us Fed: How Nonprofits Are Bridging the Gap in Food Access Through Unite Us appeared first on uniteus.com.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the pervasive issue of food insecurity in communities across the country. While food assistance providers and advocates were aware of this crisis well before the pandemic, many individuals were shocked at images in the news of long lines at food distribution centers and even our military families struggling to put food on their tables.

Addressing Food Insecurity

At Unite Us, we are intimately familiar with the issue of food insecurity. We actively recruit team members who have experience working for food banks, food pantries, and similar organizations that work to nourish their neighbors. We empathize with the added stress the pandemic put on such organizations, as they were forced to shift service delivery models while also watching the need increase within communities. From March 2020 to May 2021, Unite Us witnessed the total number of unique service episodes related to food grow by 928%. For reference, benefits navigation, a similarly sought-after resource, only grew by 310% since March 2020. Food assistance has remained one of the most requested service types across our networks.

Even with all the change and unpredictability brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing has remained constant: individuals and families are increasingly in need of food assistance. Often, one or multiple events have led them to that need, such as being laid off from their job, or being forced to decrease working hours to care for a child when schools closed. Families have been forced to make tough choices. Organizations providing food assistance across our networks have been at the tip of the spear, frequently making the difference in whether a family can make ends meet that month.

Unite Us’ aim is to address the root causes that can lead to an individual or family needing access to food assistance, and to help connect those in need to additional resources.

Connecting Individuals to Food Assistance

Since the first Unite Us network was established, food assistance providers have played an important role as network partners. Some organizations, such as the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore, receive electronic referrals to assist individuals with applications for federal nutrition assistance programs. Others, like All Faiths Food Bank in Florida, use the platform to receive HIPAA-compliant referrals from healthcare partners that identify food insecurity through pediatric screenings.

Glenn Wise, programs director at MANNA FoodBank in Western North Carolina, explained how working with Unite Us transformed the way his staff accepted referrals from healthcare providers. Unite Us, Wise explained, enabled his team, once bogged down by a time-intensive and complex system, to “save so many steps in the process.”

“Before Unite Us, we were entering information for each client into an Excel spreadsheet, but now that loop is completed within the platform,” he said.

COVID-19 restrictions meant many organizations had to shift their distribution models. Requests for home-delivered food assistance increased, especially in those instances where an individual was either homebound or self-isolating due to underlying health conditions, a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, or a potential exposure. Throughout the pandemic, our Unite Us team members worked alongside many of these organizations to update their program offerings.

Addressing Root Causes Through Referrals

Many individuals and families who had never accessed support in the past found themselves contacting local food assistance providers during the pandemic. For most people, food banks and food pantries are the initial point of contact in reaching out for help, which provides a tremendous opportunity for these organizations to assist them in making connections to other community resources that target the root causes of their food insecurity.

In communities across the country, food assistance providers are utilizing the Unite Us Platform to send electronic referrals on behalf of individuals to other organizations in the community, such as those providing housing assistance, employment, or legal services. For example, the organization Feeding Tampa Bay has been serving as a coordination center within its community to help accurately route referrals to other providers. Referral data tracked through the Unite Us Platform can also be used to identify coverage gaps and prompt connections between organizations in the community that may benefit from a strategic partnership.

Increasing Food Security

We recognize that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will linger long after the virus is no longer a threat. Resources such as food assistance will remain in great demand. The team at Unite Us is working hard to innovate new ways to help the organizations on the front lines providing services to those in need. With the only end-to-end social care solution—from identifying needs within a community, to enrollment and service delivery, to sustainable community investment—we are excited to collaborate on what provides value to your organization, those you serve, and your community. As social workers, public health professionals, and “foodbankers” at heart, we are passionate about the role we play and are honored to be partners with you in this work.

Learn how to bring Unite Us to your community.

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The post Meeting Needs Beyond Food Security appeared first on uniteus.com.