Unite Us Launches a Coordinated Care Network to Address Social Determinants of Health in The Keystone State

New York, New York, March 4, 2021 – Unite Us is building a statewide coordinated system of health, human, and social service providers to facilitate care across the state of Pennsylvania. This statewide initiative will build upon existing Unite Us-powered networks in Pennsylvania that include PAServes and United for Women. These networks will provide a solid foundation for the statewide growth, beginning in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Unite Pennsylvania will connect partners through the Unite Us Platform, allow an exchange of secure, electronic referrals, address social determinants of health, and track outcomes within communities, all of which promote health equity.

“Since day one, Unite Us has worked hand-in-hand with communities, prioritizing their needs and supporting them in their work to take care of the people who need help,” says Taylor Justice, President and Co-founder of Unite Us. “Eight years of experience has taught us that to coordinate care, it takes more than a resource directory and a referral. Providers need to be able to know what happened to the referral and more importantly, to the person. We plan to bring this accountable, secure and outcome-focused network to every county in Pennsylvania.”

A Country in Crisis
The nation has struggled for almost a year with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, both in terms of the virus itself, and the ensuing implications on people’s social needs such as housing, employment and food insecurity. It’s widely accepted that 80 percent* of a person’s health is affected by the social determinants of health (SDoH) – conditions in the environments in which people are born, live, work, play, worship, and age – that impact a range of health, quality of life, and risk outcomes. Unite Us continues to engage with health and social service partners who are on the frontlines helping their communities each day, developing solutions that appropriately meet each community’s needs.

Community-focused
The goal of the Unite Pennsylvania network is to meet people where they are, and ensure that they are able to access the resources they need, when they need them, without redundancy or having to retell their stories repeatedly. Unite Us seeks to ensure that service providers across the Commonwealth have access to the tools and resources that can help them effectively work together to best service their shared patients, clients, members, and residents. Unite Us works side-by-side with community leaders and organizations to build relationships and trust, and provide them with an efficient, accountable and seamless workflow that enables them to better help the people they serve. Network partners benefit from increased collaboration across sectors, access to a wealth of data on local service delivery, and the confidence in tracking their clients’ care journeys through to outcomes.

A Secure and Trusted Platform
Community partners, health systems, plans and governments across the country rely on Unite Us’ secure and HIPAA-compliant platform to coordinate care. With robust protections aligned with industry-leading privacy and security frameworks, Unite Us makes it possible for providers to improve the health of their clients and community while maintaining privacy and trust.

Statewide Solution
With networks in more than 42 states, 19 of them statewide, Unite Us is leading the care transformation movement by providing digital infrastructure to connect health care providers with community-based organizations, and building teams of community engagement and public health experts who live in the very communities they serve throughout the state of Pennsylvania. To find out more about how your organization can join the network, visit the Pennsylvania.UniteUs.com website.

* Hood, C. M., K. P. Gennuso, G. R. Swain, and B. B. Catlin. 2016. County health
rankings: Relationships between determinant factors and health outcomes. American
Journal of Preventive Medicine 50(2):129-135.