By OPEN MINDS Circle
Color Health acquired Mood Lifters a group-based mental health provider organization, which is enabling Color Health to launch a new behavioral healthcare solution for public and population health. With these new services, Color is helping public health departments, school districts, and others who care for population health provide behavioral and mental health care at scale. Through the acquisition and product expansion, Color Health anticipates that it will be able to support end-to-end needs to reach, screen, and connect more people to care.
Mood Lifters offers mental health programs focused on adults and youth facing stress, difficult life situations, depression, and anxiety. The groups are led by peers who have completed the courses, which allows the company to provide coaching at a lower cost than individual teletherapy. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Color’s behavioral health solution creates timely access to behavioral health screening and counseling, embeds care access points and resources directly into neighborhoods and community spaces, is in-network with leading Medicaid and Medicare plans in all 50 states, and delivers multilingual, culturally appropriate care. The solution is purpose-built to support organizations like public health departments and schools, by:
- Enabling more efficient screening: This flexible solution integrates into other screenings, including community sites, and allows organizations to catalog, manage, and continuously update local and community resources, as well as connect individuals to those resources for more acute or additional care needs.
- Providing high-availability access to clinicians, therapists, and coaches: Color’s network approach allows access to community tools and acute need escalation within 48 hours. The network of community sites and partners – including coaches, therapists, and licensed psychiatrists – is built to scale and flex to each community’s needs.
- Utilizing a group-based mental health approach: Color provides a cost-effective and community-oriented model of peer-based mental health, built on Mood Lifters’ clinically validated platform. This non-clinical support for individuals of all ages has been scientifically demonstrated to improve anxiety and depressive symptoms, including a nearly 50% symptom reduction among participants with moderate to severe anxiety and depression.
- Prioritizing sustainability: Color provides insurance billing infrastructure to enroll and credential providers (including state Medicare and Medicaid plans), billing management, and support for large programs that increases effective capacity.
- Building for public health and underserved populations: Color’s solution can integrate into existing community resources, is HIPAA-compliant, provides support for multiple languages, can be accessed online and offline, and integrates clinical and non-clinical networks representing culturally and ethnically diverse backgrounds. With canvassing and community support, organizations can quickly stand-up community sites at schools, libraries, post offices, and other community spaces.
Color Health was founded in 2013. It provides a complete platform for health care delivery, providing the technology, infrastructure, and logistics required to distribute large-scale health initiatives to diverse populations. Color works with businesses, government agencies, schools, and communities to provide equitable, accessible health care services. Color supports access for traditionally underserved communities and removes barriers to accessing care, like having to schedule an appointment or provide a home address to get care.
Contact information: Othman Laraki, Chief Executive Officer, Color Health, 831 Mitten Rd., Burlingame, CA 94010; Website: https://www.color.com/contact-us