2024 CareMessage $2.2M Impact Fund Established to Bring Funding to Safety-Net Healthcare Organizations to Positively Impact Health Equity
CareMessage, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, offers patient engagement and activation tools designed especially for safety-net healthcare organizations. The mission of CareMessage is to leverage technology to improve the health equity of people from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
The US healthcare system, one of the most complex and expensive in the world, delivers worse health outcomes than the healthcare systems of many other, comparable high-income countries. Healthcare disparities in the US affect historically marginalized groups, with minority groups experiencing lower life expectancy, and higher rates of maternal mortality and chronic illness.
“One of the first steps toward achieving health equity needs to be a focus on access to care,” said Tracy Angelocci, Chief Medical Officer of CareMessage and formerly Chief Medical Information Officer at a Federally Qualified Health Center. “Improved health outcomes for people from low socioeconomic backgrounds will start by getting them connected to and engaged with Community Health Centers, the organizations that are proven to best deliver care to these patients.”
Many humanitarian aid organizations and philanthropic entities agree with this stance. Funding is available from many sources with a goal of increasing access to care, improving clinical outcomes, and addressing social drivers of health. However, getting available funding delivered to community-based health organizations, which often don’t have resources available to pursue grant applications, can be challenging.
Over the past several years, CareMessage has experienced success in pursuing grant funding and applying it to partially subsidize the cost of CareMessage adoption for community health centers, and to support existing customers, with a focus on acknowledging exemplary organizations and partnering with them on furthering adoption and sharing best practices. In 2023, CareMessage facilitated the allocation of $500,000 in funding from philanthropic organization Direct Relief to 30 community health centers, extending the platform’s reach to 540,000 new patients via new health center partners.
Acting as the conduit to bring available funding to community health organizations means that CareMessage can equip them with technology that has demonstrated improvement in health outcomes. CareMessage is the only patient engagement tool on the market that has published research on improvements in clinical outcomes- conducted by independent academic medical centers- including reduction in HbA1c in patients with diabetes, FIT kit completion, and statistically significant weight loss.
To that end, CareMessage has established the 2024 CareMessage Impact Fund, with a core focus on improving health equity. Principal initial contributors to the fund are Johnson & Johnson, as part of its enduring commitment to health equity, with a lead contribution of $1.25M, The Dovetail Impact Foundation, and Sanofi.
CareMessage anticipates that the 2024 CareMessage Impact Fund will propel the organization forward in its mission of leveraging technology to impact health equity, and result in demonstrable improvement in health outcomes for people from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
“Leveraging mobile technology offers us an opportunity to close the gap in access to healthcare and improve health outcomes in resource-constrained settings and among historically marginalized populations,” says Frank Rodriguez, Global Leader, Our Race to Health Equity, Johnson & Johnson. “Community Health Centers across the country are key to that effort. We are proud to work with CareMessage to help community health centers engage with patients in innovative and sustainable ways to advance health equity and ensure that no one is left behind.”
About Johnson & Johnson’s Commitment to Health Equity
The company launched a health equity commitment in 2020 with the bold ambition that together, we can create a world where the color of your skin is not a determinant of your access to care, quality of care or health outcomes. In alignment with Our Credo, commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and legacy of taking on the toughest health challenges, we are turning a moment into a movement to rebuild healthcare from a diverse perspective by supporting solutions that systemically address racial health equity.
Johnson & Johnson aspires to help eradicate racial and social injustice as a public health threat by eliminating health inequities for people of color. Learn more at https://www.jnj.com/global-health-equity
About CareMessage
CareMessage is the largest patient activation platform for underserved populations in the United States. The robust CareMessage platform enables organizations to use mobile messaging to fill gaps in care, provide education, remind patients of upcoming appointments, automate follow up for open referrals, and provide one-to-one communication. As a 501(c)3 non-profit, CareMessage leverages technology to help close to 400 safety-net organizations nationwide fulfill the essential needs of over 10 million underserved patients.
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