Blooming Health is pleased to announce its collaboration with AARP Foundation to improve older adults’ access to food security benefits

June 29th, 2022

Today, Blooming Health proudly announces its collaboration with AARP Foundation to improve older adults’ access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. As a result of this collaborative effort, participating community-based organizations (CBOs) will be able to use Blooming Health’s platform to conduct outreach campaigns to increase awareness of available benefits and give more people access to them. Blooming Health enables CBOs to expand their benefits screening and improve their operational capacity by automating processes.

Older adults have lower participation rates in a number of benefits programs for which they’re eligible. For example, less than 50% of eligible older adults participate in SNAP, only 37% in the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE), and less than 55% in the Medicare Savings Program (MSP). Key barriers include feeling there’s something to be ashamed of (stigma), not understanding eligibility and benefits amounts, the complexity of the application process — and simply not knowing the benefit is available to them (low awareness). The purpose of this collaboration with AARP Foundation is to use Blooming Health’s remote engagement solution to improve access to eligible benefits for older adults who are living with low income, especially those with multi-racial and non-English speaking backgrounds.

Founded in 2020 by Nima Roohi, Ph.D., Kavitha Gnanasambandan, Ph.D., and Naman Gupta, Blooming Health works with aging service providers (ASPs) to enable more older adults to continue living in their communities healthily — healthy aging-in-place. ASPs use Blooming Health’s self-service web application to communicate with their older adult clients via one-click broadcasts, wellness check-ins, gamified engagement, interest-based program reminders, and more. Older adults receive these communications through the low-tech channels they rely on: text messages, voice calls, and email. Blooming Health offers many languages in addition to English, including Spanish, Chinese, and Russian, and plans to have up to 20 language options in the near future.

AARP Foundation, the charitable affiliate of AARP, focuses on helping vulnerable older people with low income increase their economic opportunity by creating and advancing effective solutions that help them secure the essentials. In 2020 alone, AARP Foundation served 3 million people, tackling senior poverty by sparking bold, innovative solutions that empower older adults, especially those who have faced racism and discriminatory barriers. We’re pleased to collaborate with an organization committed to exploring creative ways to help older adults connect and stay connected — to each other and to their communities.

Blooming Health’s platform will enable CBOs to engage with older adults regarding their benefits needs in a personalized way via text, voice calls, or emails. Launched in February 2022, the collaboration between Blooming Health and AARP Foundation created 50,000 engagements with participating older adults, employing relevant content to increase their awareness of SNAP benefits. Frequent check-ins made it possible to pre-screen individuals with particularly high needs and refer them to benefits teams that facilitated screenings, sign-ups, recertifications, and updates on deductions. The first three months of Blooming Health’s collaboration with AARP Foundation saw a 400% increase in requests for SNAP benefits help from older adults compared to the same period in 2021 in participating CBOs.

Should this initial success continue, Blooming Health and AARP Foundation have the opportunity to scale up their efforts to increase access to benefits. The payoff is clear: reducing the cost of living and improving the quality of life for millions of older adults nationwide.

About Blooming Health

Blooming Health enables aging service providers to improve client engagement by 3X via Blooming Health’s easy-to-use engagement solution, while also saving 2 hours/day for their staff. 14+ CBOs and AAAs use Blooming Health to engage tens of thousands of clients at scale in a personalized way across text, voice calls, emails, and in multiple languages. View a brief product demo here.

To learn more about Blooming Health, please reach out to us at team@gobloominghealth.com