CV19 Checkup

In the U.S. there are 105 million “high risk”  U.S. citizens (70 million age 60+)  who are struggling to stay safe, healthy and get their needs met. 

Meanwhile government (all levels) are "flying blind” about consumer knowledge and attitudes,  how to  persuade citizens to adopt safer behaviors and how to get them needed help.  

The CV19 CheckUp is a cost-effective, highly scalable digital service  to simultaneously address both challenges. 

Consumers get individualized information and actionable recommendations about:  

• Key risks:  (severity, susceptibility, unsafe behaviors and spreader risks) 
• Steps they can take to reduce risks 
• How and where to  get help with self-identified unmet needs for healthcare, social services and financial assistance.

Government receives real-time, actionable population-level data and insights about consumer knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and needs to identify hot spots target interventions and to inform policymakers.   

We're starting in the U.S. but the solution has application globally and for future pandemics. 

As governments relax social distancing restrictions, 105 million high risk U.S. citizens are increasingly “on their own” to try to stay safe and healthy. 

 All are at higher risk of severe or fatal consequences if they get infected, but most are not doing all they could to avoid getting sick.  Many have new needs for health, social services and financial assistance. Millions are struggling to maintain physical and mental health while sheltering at home.

Consumers don’t need general advice: they need individualized information about their risks and guidance based on their specific circumstances. Currently, there is nowhere for individuals, much less millions of them, to get this information. 

Government (federal, state and local) are essentially “flying blind” about both high-risk and low-risk populations. 

• What are consumer beliefs and attitudes about the pandemic?
• To what extent are consumers complying with recommended safety protocols?
•  How do beliefs, attitudes and behaviors vary by geographic location? By race and ethnic groups?  By sources of information? 
• What are their unmet needs of high-risk citizens for health care, social services and financial support?   
•  How to cost-effectively educate millions of individuals about the risks they pose to themselves and others and persuade them to practice safe behaviors? 

The CV19 CheckUp is a  cost-effective and highly scalable nationwide service to inform and empower tens of millions of Americans to be safer, healthier and get their needs met during the pandemic. 

• A free, confidential, nationwide, 24/7 service
• Available on computers, tablets and smart phones. 
• Designed for use by consumers, family members, professionals and volunteers
• Consumers fill out an online questionnaire and receive personalized risk analyses and recommendations based on their individual circumstances and self-reported needs. 
• Curates and leverages content from CDC, WHO, states and other sources.
• Available through state and local governments, non-profit organizations and businesses.  

CV19 CheckUp provides new data and insights to inform public health interventions and policymakers, including

• Social and Behavioral “Hot Spots”, eg.
  • High risk people underestimate their risks of a severe outcome
  • Low-risk people underestimate their “spreader risk” of infecting other Many people are practicing unsafe behaviors
  •   Many people have unmet needs for health and social services

•  Data and Insights:
  • What belief systems or needs are blocking individuals from adhering to social distancing.
  • Extent of unmet needs for food, transportation, social services health care and financial assistance 
  •  Prevalence and severity of self-reported mental health, anxiety and loneliness.
  •  Variations by geography, race, age, etc.  

Our solution is primarily targeted at the 70 million older adults (age 60+) and 35 million younger people with serious underlying health conditions.

We will understand consumer needs and circumstances, by having them complete a confidential questionnaire about their current knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, environmental circumstances and unmet needs.  We don't  ask for any personally identifiable information.  Based on our experiences with Benefits CheckUp (used by 8.5 million consumers) we are confident that consumers will provide this information in return for information they want and need. 

• High risk people will get the personalized information, analyses and recommendations they need to be safer, healthier and get their needs met.  address stark new realities of the pandemic and their
• State and local governments will get new data and insights to target to better target social and behavioral interventions that reduce the spread  of the virus and support long-term health and well being
• Health and social services systems will have real-time information to more systematically identify unmet and emerging needs. 

We are already working with the National Council on Aging, Mental Health America, Mt. Sinai Medical School and the states of Florida, Michigan and Washington to finalize and offer the service.

Our team has worked on pandemics (Ebola, H1N1), with older adults (former CEO of National Council on Aging, and public health officials and experts that have come together to address the challenge of how do we address the lack of information among high-risk populations during a time when they cannot easily access primary care and have other needs for social services and financial assistance.  This is a large scale challenge that specifically relates to the core of this challenge: helping people to understand their severity risk, their susceptibility risk and spreader risk so they adopt healthier behaviors.

•  Our solution squarely addresses the behavioral and social determinants that affect the spread of the virus.  Most solutions on the market are dealing symptom tracing and virus tracking.
• Most solutions focus on the general public, while our solution addresses the specific challenges and needs faced by 105 million high-risk citizens. 
• While most communications and educational efforts involve broadcasting information to the public, our solution provide specific, personalized and actionable analyses and recommendations to individuals. 
• Our solution not only  empowers people by educating them about their risks and how to mitigate them, it also provides them with practical information and help  to address self-reported needs for food, transportation, health care, social services and financial assistance. 
• Our solution is “shovel ready” highly scalable and extremely cost-effective.  
• Our team is applying best in class information and knowledge about population health, machine learning, and expertise in communication with older adults to achieve the audacious goal of reaching and helping 105 million high risk citizens.
• The fact that we are getting almost instant traction and very strong interest from state and municipal governments demonstrates the timeliness and power of our solution.  

The product is being built by Shaker Rawan, with 20+ of product experience in healthcare and financial services. Shaker has spent the last 3 years building one of the most sophisticated technology platforms in the healthcare space. He is bringing this entire platform to BellAge providing us with a de-risked technology and a machine learning platform designed to collect data and provide clear recommendations on actionable behavior for older adults and the chronically ill. 

 The content is being driven by Marlene Schneider the architect of BenefitsCheckup.org, solution that has provided personalized reports and recommendations to more than 8.5 million older adults and their families. 

Although BellAge is only three months old, we are already partnering with many leading organizations including Mathematica (on severity risk calculations), the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine (on medical / scientific issues) and a several leading sources of consumer content including, Mental Health America (on depression/anxiety and loneliness issues), National Council on Aging,  Healthwise (health education content), etc. 

This team built BenefitsCheckup.org which has 250K older adult users a month and is one of the best products in the market to connect users to the right public and private benefits they need.

www.benefitscheckup.org

Our theory of change is based on the health belief model (HBM) to promote the practice of safe health behaviors (Rosenstock, Strecher, & Becker, 1988). The HBM is a cognitive model of health behavior change that has been used across a variety of health behaviors since its inception in the 1950s. For health-related action, the model underscores that there must be 1) sufficient motivation or health concern present, 2) perceptions of threat of a disease, and 3) greater benefits of engaging in the health behavior over the costs/barriers associated with it. The model stipulates that perception of threat of a disease is a byproduct of the perceived seriousness of the disease (i.e., likelihood of hospitalization of contracted COVID-19) and perceived susceptibility to the disease (i.e., risk of contracting COVID-19). The perception of threat can be modified by additional factors that include demographics (e.g., age and gender), socio-psychological variables (e.g., personality and social class), structural variables (e.g., knowledge of the disease and knowing someone who had the disease), and cues to action (e.g., heath advertisements and advice from friends). In combination with perceived threat, a person conducts a cost-benefit analysis: benefits minus costs/barriers of taking the health-related action (e.g., financial cost, side-effects, and control beliefs). The model also includes the importance of self-efficacy from social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1977), such that someone is more likely to engage in a behavior if they feel they have the

ability to engage in that behavior in their specific situation. Taking the components of the model together, the best case scenario for us to enact health behavior change is to increase perceived susceptibility, increase perceived severity, increase/make obvious the perceived benefits, minimize perceived costs/barriers, increase cues to action, and increase self-efficacy.The second aspect of our theory of change is that we can achieve widespread engagement by consumers by offering free, confidential and personalized information and guidance (as we have done with BenefitsCheckUp.org) and widespread adoption by governments and other organizations by offering a scalable, cost-effective solution that simultaneously helps large numbers of people and generates actionable population-level data and insights

We are currently working with three states that have 15M people that fall into our target audience.

In this year, we plan on rolling out with 25 states and/or large cities primarily targeting older adults and high-risk younger people.  Within twelve months, we expect to reach and serve at least 2 million high risk older adults.

In five years, we would like to reach at least 40M adults around the world. 

Our goal in the next five years is to be the single source for Aging Well. We would like to use this initial tool for Covid-19 to empower older adults in making the core decisions they need to be safe as states reopen, but we would like to grow this into a tool that helps older adult age well. Our goal is to transform the lives of millions of older adults around the world. 

The biggest barriers to reaching our goals are funding to reach our market penetration goals. The other challenges we face are collecting quality data, understanding the core differences in psychological barriers to changing behaviors, and adoption by consumers. 

Our team has raised tens of millions for other companies so we feel like we will be able to overcome that obstacle. Data challenges will mean making sure we partner with the best in class data resources. By partnering with organizations like NCOA we can reach more consumers in a faster way. 

6 f/t engineers, 4 f/t people in the core team, 3 people in data science (contractors)

Our team is applying best in class information and knowledge about population health, machine learning, and expertise in communication with older adults to achieve the audacious goal of reaching and helping 105 million high risk citizens.

The team is led by James Firman who was President and CEO of National Council on Aging for 25+ years and is nationally recognized as a leading innovator of services and programs for older adults.  . Joseph Schneier that has run two tech companies in the older adult space. 

Our team also includes leading experts in key aspects of our solution:   Prabhjot Singh MD.Ph.D (Scientific and Medical Advisor),  Harlem Gunness (public health), Gerald Carey (artificial intelligence),  Tasha Strazsewski Ph.D (behavioral and social psychology).   

• Advancing States – to market the solution to state governments

• Mathematica – partnering to develop and disseminate the “severity risk” application

• Mental Health America – to select validated measures for anxiety and depression and to refer consumers to the best solutions addressing mental health needs. 

• Mt. Sinai School of Medicine – Advisors on medical and scientific issues and strategy

• St.John’s School of Public Health – Advisors on public health strategies, questions and resources

• OASIS – consumer testing with older adults and developing resources to mobilize senior volunteers to extend the reach of the service

• Trusty.care – experts in using AI and big data

• National Council on Aging – will offer a nationwide, direct-to-consumer version of the service.

• Heathwise -  helping with consumer health content and user experience

• Florida Department of Elder Affairs,  Michigan Department of Health and Human Services,  Washington State Department of Social and Health Services -  initial launch partners who are helping to "co-create" and tailor the service to address specific state and local conditions.

We are currently selling to state health and human services agencies.  We will soon enter into marketing partnerships with organizations that currently offer solutions to municipalities and health plan.  . We charge an annual license fee.  We first began offering the solution to states three weeks ago:  so far we have 3 contracts and 12 states in process. 

We will be at break even by October 2020 just through our initial customer base. As we grow we may need to raise capital to expand our marketing. 

We are a team taking on a massive challenge, with the right people at the table and we are eager to get the support we need to transform the lives of millions of older adults. We think this program will help us to achieve our goals of overcoming the challenges around data and growth. 

We would like to partner with the CDC, with any health and human services agencies, and CMS

We would also like help with globalization strategies

We need capital to continue to make our expert system smarter, to link our technologies to other expert systems and to implement our nationwide marketing strategy so that we can make our service available to 105 million high risk citizens in the U.S.   

Our AI team is using data to inform models into why and how people change their behaviors to be safer during a pandemic. We are focused on the most vulnerable populations and this funding would really help us to accelerate this process.