Accolade Expands Mental Health Integrated Care Offering to Adolescents and Teens

Accolade and Headspace Health to increase access to preventative resources and mental health services for adolescents and teens amid national mental health crisis

SEATTLE, May 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Accolade (Nasdaq: ACCD), the company that provides millions of individuals and their families with Personalized Healthcare, today announced that its Mental Health Integrated Care solution, a comprehensive offering for employers that integrates mental and physical healthcare for better employee health and reduced healthcare costs, is now available to adolescents and teenage family members of employees.

Amid the ongoing mental health crisis among adolescents and teens in the United States, Accolade and Headspace Health have partnered to expand Mental Health Integrated Care and help employers ensure their employees and their adolescent family members are fully supported through:

• Ginger for Teens, which provides adolescents ages 13 to 17 with personalized resources to support their mental health needs from prevention to condition management.
• Headspace for Work, which offers members immediate access to meditations, focus music, workouts, sleepcasts and more to drive healthy habit formation and long-term resilience. Employers gain insight into their workforce health and well-being to encourage healthy habit-building and opportunities to upskill and embed mindfulness across their organization to ease stress and burnout.
• A preferred Employee Assistance Program (EAP) partner as an extension of the Ginger offering already available to employers.

The ongoing partnership between Accolade and Headspace Health aims to further destigmatize mental health support and treatment and help members manage their physical and mental health in a comprehensive, integrated and easy-to-access way with support at every step. Together, the two companies coordinate care for members through shared care plans, implementation of a rapid escalation process, discussion of cases in joint case rounds and the exchange of data – including after-visit summaries from Ginger, Headspace Health's on-demand virtual mental health offering.

While the mental health crisis is impacting those of all ages, adolescents are acutely suffering. According to the CDC, at least 15% of teens in the U.S. had a major depressive episode and about 37% had persistent feelings of hopelessness or sadness in the last year. Additionally, Families in Society reported that a staggering 63% of working parents have reported reducing their hours to care for a child with a mental health condition. Unfortunately, most of the U.S. is in a mental health provider shortage area and finding a provider who specializes in treating adolescents is even more challenging.

"Considering the changing work landscape and the growing crisis in adolescent mental health amid the ongoing pandemic, we want to ensure that human resource leaders are equipped with the tools they need to provide whole-person care to their employees and their families," said Dr. Shantanu Nundy, chief medical officer at Accolade. "Providing personalized, clinically integrated solutions and ecosystems to companies enables people leaders to effectively offer their employees a comprehensive strategy that supports all aspects of their members' and their families' overall well-being. It is now more important than ever to expand our Mental Health Integrated Care offering with an adolescent-specific approach to support whole-person, whole-family care."

Mental Health Integrated Care brings physical and mental healthcare into an integrated care system enabled by collaborative data sharing, personalized care plans and clinical coordination delivered by an extended care team with support at every step along the way. Those that need additional support can engage with a certified behavioral health coach within minutes and receive virtual video-based therapy and psychiatry appointments within a few days. For organizations that want to provide greater continuity of care beginning from their EAP provider's front door, the offering is also expanding to include EAP services as an extension of Ginger.

"Physical and mental health conditions often go hand-in-hand and we need to treat patients in a holistic way," said Katie DiPerna Cook, senior vice president and head of partnerships at Headspace Health. "Our on-demand mental healthcare system combined with Accolade's personalized approach work together to provide employers and their teams with cost-effective support and ultimately better health outcomes."

Accolade's Integrated Care Offerings 

Mental Health Integrated Care was the first clinically integrated care solution Accolade released in 2020 and today it supports more than 250,000 members. Earlier this month, Accolade introduced its second integrated care solution, Medication Integrated Care, in partnership with Rx Savings Solutions. The power of integrated care comes from the deep combination of services from Accolade and ecosystem healthcare partners to support a member's entire healthcare journey by guiding them to the right care at the right time.

Read more about Mental Health Integrated Care here.

About Accolade 
Accolade (Nasdaq: ACCD) provides millions of people and their families with an exceptional healthcare experience that is personal, data driven, and value based to help every person live their healthiest life. Accolade solutions combine virtual primary care, mental health support and expert medical opinion services with intelligent technology and best-in-class care navigation. Accolade's Personalized Healthcare approach puts humanity back in healthcare by building relationships that connect people and their families to the right care at the right time to improve outcomes, lower costs and deliver consumer satisfaction. Accolade consistently receives consumer satisfaction ratings of over 90%. For more information, visit accolade.com. 

About Headspace Health
Headspace Health is a leading provider of mental health and wellbeing solutions, touching the lives of over 100 million people in 190 countries. Through our flagship Headspace brand, we provide mindfulness tools for everyday life, including meditations, sleepcasts, mindful movement and focus exercises. Our enterprise brands, Headspace for Work and Ginger, are distributed through over 3,500 enterprises, including Starbucks, Adobe, Delta Air Lines and Paramount; and through health plans such as Cigna. Our members and enterprise partners' employees have access to mindfulness and meditation tools, CBT, coaching, therapy and psychiatry, ultimately helping them to be healthier and more productive. To learn more about Headspace Health and our family of brands, visit headspacehealth.com.

SOURCE Accolade