Knowledge is Power: Making Vital Community Connections During COVID-19
In light of the COVID-19 crisis, the majority of health care conversations in the news are related to hospital-based care. It’s understandable; we are facing a global pandemic at an unprecedented scale. But this pandemic also has ripple effects beyond the ticker metrics — COVID-19 cases, deaths, hospital admissions, positive tests — and into the social fabric of our communities.
Twenty million adults reported in July 2021 that they did not have enough to eat, and 11.4 million Americans were behind on rent payments as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2021, at least 10 million children had a family member who was unemployed or lacked work as a result of the pandemic. Like the virus itself, these socio-economic repercussions are impacting health and well-being — and further widening health disparities.
A year and a half into this crisis, the need for community resources is greater than ever before. But where can individuals and families go for help? At NowPow, we believe Knowledge is Power. We know people want to take care of themselves and their families, but they may not be aware of the full spectrum of resources available to them. By identifying who needs a little extra support and providing those folks with a personalized list of accessible resources in a timely manner, we can reduce the burden of the pandemic on those individuals, as well as the collective “we.”
Staff and volunteers with hospitals, clinics, emergency medical services, and county health departments are uniquely positioned to address not only patients’ immediate medical concerns but also those health-related social concerns. Our NowRx one-way referral tool, which doesn’t require personally identifiable information, can be rapidly deployed across large groups of care professionals, rapid responders and volunteers to extend health care to incorporate social care. These NowRx users can quickly jump on their device to search, filter, and select highly matched resources — from a food pantry to safe housing — and share them in a matter of seconds via text, email or printed document with whoever needs the information. Referrals can be shared in more than 100 languages, and recipients often pass them along to friends and neighbors, amplifying the effect.
Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve seen our health care partners use NowPow in many innovative ways. In New York City, an early epicenter of the pandemic, staff at field hospitals and the USS Comfort used NowPow to send COVID-19 patients information on food delivery services, mental health support, and in-home nursing care. NYC Health + Hospitals, the largest public health care system in the nation, found safe and affordable hotels for COVID-19 patients who needed to quarantine away from their family members, reduce social contact, and slow the spread of the disease. MetroPlusHealth, the health insurance subsidiary of NYC Health + Hospitals, identified approximately 85,000 at-risk individuals sheltering in place and texted them community based services from NowPow’s database. Healthfirst, New York’s largest not-for-profit health plan, incorporated NowPow’s APIs into a mobile app optimized for their Medicaid members. And Northwell Health, New York State’s largest health care provider, shared NowPow referrals through their Health Home and House Calls program to increase access to food for the frail elderly.
Elsewhere, we saw NowPow transform access to resources for hundreds of thousands more. Find more innovative interventions — such as integrating NowPow into the patient portal and using the platform to support health care employees — from across the country here.
Beyond traditional medical providers, we know community partners are trusted sources of advice. That’s why we’ve also made it as easy as possible for them to use our platform. At the start of the pandemic, we added our text and email functionality to our free community tool, “CommRx,” so our partners could easily share resources. And once the vaccine became available, we included a new Connect & Protect™ feature so that COVID-19 vaccination information, including regional vaccine hotlines and websites, can be made available on every HealtheRx, our curated lists of resource referrals. We also made it even easier to connect people to vital resources such as transportation and child care to reduce barriers to vaccination.
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we are incredibly connected to each other, in more ways than we could ever imagine. We’re proud of the NowPow team and our partners for their creative leadership, problem solving abilities, and care for each other during this time of unprecedented need. Together we are making a real difference in people’s lives.
CommRx Connect & Protect™ is free for up to 20 users. Existing users simply need to email “Connect and Protect” to engagement@nowpow.com to promptly receive a platform update. New users can quickly sign up at www.nowpow.com/cboplugin.
For organizations with more than 20 users, contact more@nowpow.com to learn more about NowPow’s NowRx tool, which can be upgraded with closed-loop functionality down the road.