Photo: Halfpoint Images/Getty Images
Pear Suite, a digital health company that supports community health workers (CHWs), announced a partnership with grocery delivery company Instacart to deliver food-as-medicine offerings to communities nationwide.
The partnership will enable CHWs to address food insecurity and expand access to healthy, fresh food for Medicaid recipients.
Pear Suite's AI-powered platform provides CHWs with tools to identify and handle social determinants of health challenges, including food insecurity.
Instacart helps communities gain access to food from local and regional grocers as well as provide same-day delivery.
The alliance between the two companies expands on a six-month pilot program whereby CHWs integrated nutrition education, SNAP enrollment support and online grocery delivery services through Instacart and Instacart Fresh Funds into its outreach, engaging more than 3,000 Medicaid members.
According to Pear Suite, the pilot revealed that one in five SNAP-eligible community members were not enrolled in SNAP.
“Our partnership with Instacart Health shows what is possible when health plans, community health workers and local organizations come together," Colby Takeda, cofounder and CEO of Pear Suite, told MobiHealthNews.
"By combining Pear Suite’s platform with Instacart Health’s Fresh Funds, we are expanding access to healthy food, at scale, in ways that honor cultural and linguistic needs. This collaboration proves that community-rooted solutions can transform trust, engagement and equity across healthcare, which helps drive cost savings for payors."
THE LARGER TREND
In March, Pear Suite launched the Pear Cares Provider Network. According to the company, the network aims to increase utilization of community health worker services while breaking down barriers that have limited CHWs from partnering with health plans.
In February, Pear Suite expanded its efforts to support maternal and child health through doulas and other birthworkers.
In 2024, Zero Overdose partnered with Pear Suite to provide training for CHWs and other home and community-based service providers across the country.
Through the partnership, the companies provided training to CHWs and other home and community-focused organizations, with a primary goal of improving motivational interviewing and counseling skills, de-escalation, screening and identifying individuals at-risk for suicide, overdose-safety planning and harm-reduction techniques.
In 2023, Pear Suite partnered with OutCare Health, a nonprofit organization focused on LGBTQ+ health equity, to provide Pear's social navigation platform to employers, healthcare organizations and health plans to address the care needs of the LGBTQ+ community.
The Indiana-based company utilized Pear's navigation platform with social determinants of health data to expand its reach in connecting LGBTQ+ patients with affirming healthcare providers, support groups, mentors and community health resources.
In 2024, Medical Home Network (MHN) collaborated with Instacart's SNAP eligibility screener on MHN's managed care platform, MHNConnect.
The capability gives care teams at the 80-plus FQHCs that MHN partners with a tool within their workflows to decide SNAP eligibility, expedite enrollment and explain to patients how to use benefits through Instacart.
Also last year, in-home care provider DispatchHealth and Instacart announced a partnership to provide Dispatch's in-home care professionals with tools to prescribe food to patients using Instacart Health.
Through the partnership, Dispatch's in-home providers can prescribe food interventions for patients through Instacart Health.
