Virgin Pulse Enhances Lifestyle Support with Expanded Ecosystem Partners and New VP+ Categories

Integrated into Homebase for Health, Virgin Pulse's Partner Ecosystem Makes it Easy to Address Everyday and Long-term Health & Wellbeing Needs for Diverse Populations

PROVIDENCE, R.I., April 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Virgin Pulse, the leading global digital-first health, wellbeing, and navigation company, today announced updates to its partner ecosystem that enable clients to more proactively address important lifestyle needs of their people. A new dietary assessment and management tool is now available, as well as multiple new offerings in the VP+ partner bundle program, including caregiver support, nutrition classes, substance use management, adult sleep improvement, and infant parenting support.

The value of Virgin Pulse's growing ecosystem is being showcased at this month's Thrive Summit 2023 with 27 partner sponsors including LifeSpeak Inc., parent company for Wellbeats and ALAViDA (Diamond); Sword Health (Gold); and Cariloop, Koa Health, meQuilibrium (meQ), and RethinkCare (Silver). Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the immersive event features world-renowned experts, academics, and innovators addressing topics that are top of mind for the expected 1,200 employer, health plan, and health system leaders attending in Salt Lake City, Utah and virtually, April 11-13, 2023.

Available via its Homebase for Health® platform, Virgin Pulse's partner ecosystem streamlines access to more than 70 specialty solutions, making it easy for companies to connect members with a broad range of high-impact health and wellbeing programs. The company's one-contract VP+ partner bundle program enables employers and health plans to easily curate a suite of pre-vetted, pre-integrated partner solutions that meet the needs of their populations.

Joining the Virgin Pulse partner ecosystem or the VP+ bundle program are:

• Cariloop (VP+) – Cariloop helps families manage their loved ones' care needs by connecting them to an employer-sponsored caregiver support platform. The company's experienced Care Coaches provide personalized guidance and professional support, while its digital platform provides easy access to robust collaboration tools and critical caregiving resources. The comprehensive solution helps reduce stress and burnout for caregivers, and helps employers drive increased employee productivity and reduced absenteeism.
  
  
• Diet ID (Partner Ecosystem) – Diet ID's digital nutrition platform helps organizations measure, engage, and reduce dietary risk factors in their populations using the power of images and evidence-based behavior change strategies. It is designed by world-renowned lifestyle medicine leader and founding director of the Yale Prevention Research Center, Dr. David Katz, and delivers evidence-based nutrition guidance for dozens of health goals including type 2 diabetes, brain health, menopause, and more. The patented, instant method in comprehensive, digital dietary assessment removes friction and inspires change in diet quality, the most important driver of overall health and cost reduction in a population.
  
  
• LifeSpeak Inc. (VP+) – LifeSpeak Inc., the corporate entity of Wellbeats Wellness and ALAViDA Substance Use, provides a flexible portfolio of wellbeing solutions across mental health, wellness, fitness, nutrition, substance use, and caregiving. LifeSpeak Inc. is adding more of its solutions to VP+, which already includes its Wellbeats Wellness product. Now substance use management by ALAViDA as well as expert nutrition and mental health solutions will be part of the VP+ bundle program.
  
  
• Sleepfit (VP+) – Sleepfit is an evidence-based digital sleep solution that uses science and the knowledge of sleep experts to ensure adults get the sleep they need. It is designed to boost performance, safety, and wellbeing through sleep awareness, sleep disorder screening, and kick-starting healthy sleep habits. Sleepfit works with innovative employers and insurers to provide scalable, affordable, and measurable sleep improvement programs. Sleepfit's digital program lowers healthcare costs, increases employees' productivity, and improves the individual's quality of life.
  
  
• SleepWellBaby (VP+) – SleepWellBaby is the baby-led sleep and settling app that empowers parents to become their child's sleep expert, while providing critical mental health support for parents. SleepWellBaby translates cutting-edge research and a proven approach that helps more than 60,000 babies and toddlers every year. SleepWellBaby delivers evidence-based parenting advice and tools on baby sleep and settling to parents with children 0-3 years old to improve child health outcomes, reduce parental mental health issues, and shorten the return-to-work period.

Virgin Pulse's comprehensive review and selection process ensures each partner within its ecosystem maintains the highest privacy and security standards, drives member engagement, and is focused on delivering health and cost-saving outcomes. Virgin Pulse eliminates administrative burdens by completing these comprehensive reviews of all new partners along with handling vendor contracting, procurement, and billing on behalf of clients.

"We continually assess market trends to determine emerging areas of need that will help our clients meet employee expectations for total health and wellbeing support," said Jeff Yoshimura, chief product officer at Virgin Pulse. "By offering a wide range of partner resources through our Homebase for Health platform, we're making it easier and more cost-effective for employers to deploy them, helping their staff improve their quality of life.

"For example, caregiving support is an area that affects both workers and their employers tremendously," continued Yoshimura. "Employed family caregivers regularly experience many work-related challenges, including absenteeism and presenteeism, with an estimated $5,600 per employee due to reduced productivity at work.¹ Our clients can now choose Cariloop as part of their VP+ bundle to support their employees while benefitting their organization."

Integrated, Curated Partner Ecosystem

Virgin Pulse's partner ecosystem helps companies close gaps in care across 25 health and wellbeing categories while addressing the most common and costly health concerns. To optimize program utilization and user experience, all partner solutions are seamlessly integrated and accessible through Virgin Pulse's Homebase for Health platform, which provides a single entry point to comprehensive digital capabilities and live services, as well as the partner ecosystem. Combined with personalized recommendations and incentives, the platform guides members to make the best possible decisions at every stage of their health and wellbeing journey. Usage data shows that four times more members are engaged with select partner solutions integrated into Virgin Pulse versus standalone deployments.

About Virgin Pulse

Virgin Pulse is the leading digital-first health, wellbeing, and navigation company that empowers organizations across the globe to activate populations, improve health outcomes, and reduce spend in an era of accelerating cost and complexity. Virgin Pulse's Homebase for Health® connects data, people, and technology to deliver high tech, human touch experiences that engage and reward individual journeys. Virgin Pulse impacts over 100 million people across 190 countries by helping Fortune 500, national health plans, and many other organizations change lives – and businesses – for good. For more tips and insights, connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

¹ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1098301522020691#preview-section-abstract

SOURCE Virgin Pulse