Empathy, a platform helping families navigate the emotional and logistical challenges of loss, today announced a new partnership with Family First, a provider of personalized solutions helping alleviate caregiving challenges faced by employees. Through this partnership, Empathy and Family First will empower progressive, family-oriented employers with the tools they need to fully support employee caregivers facing a wide array of challenges, including those following loss.
Over 40 million Americans care for an unwell family member over the age of 50. Many of these caregivers are forced to reduce their working hours or resign from their positions completely to deal with financial & legal challenges, home care needs, complicated family dynamics, or to address their own mental health. On top of this, there are the added logistical and emotional burdens that occur when the person being cared for passes away- 76% of employees reported harm to their performance or status at work after experiencing loss. When employees are equipped with full-circle support to address all caregiving challenges, they are empowered to balance both responsibilities at work and home.
Family First couples the power of AI with the guidance of an expert care team to ensure employees have the caregiving solutions they need, including access to their mobile app to optimize care planning, and the ability to connect to specialists such as nurses, social workers, and physicians anytime, anywhere. Recognizing that, quite often, the grieving process can begin long before actual loss arrives, Family First provides employees with counseling & mental health services as well, assisting with depression, stress, caregiver burnout, and life transitions. Through its specific focus on bereavement care, an area quite often overlooked in the employee benefits sector, Empathy extends those services by helping caregivers suffering with the loss of a loved one. Empathy’s award-winning app is complemented by a full-fledged care team, including 24/7 care managers, social workers, and the world’s foremost experts on grief, providing employee caregivers going through bereavement with critical layers of assistance.
“Empathy shares our vision of helping families solve some of the most impossible challenges they ever face,” said Evan Falchuk, CEO of Family First. “Bereavement and caregiving are deeply intertwined. Our partnership with Empathy reflects our shared mission to combine technology with compassionate and people-centric services to empower employers to support their employees in a time of need.”
“Caregivers’ responsibilities do not vanish when the one they care for passes away; instead, they typically face a new set of challenges that they are often not properly equipped to take on,” said Ron Gura, Co-Founder & CEO of Empathy. “Family First empowers employers to help individual employees prioritize self-care while guaranteeing comprehensive support for their family’s needs. We are proud to extend Family First’s comprehensive offering, assisting employees in navigating the transition from addressing medical challenges to coping with the multifaceted emotional and administrative aftermath that accompanies the loss of a loved one.”
About Empathy
Empathy is the comprehensive support system for loss, offering bereaved families holistic guidance and care for all of the administrative, emotional, legal, and financial challenges they face after their loved one passes away. Empathy’s award-winning app and care team are trusted by leading employers and insurance carriers to support their employees and beneficiaries through life’s greatest challenges, saving them time, money, and stress. Headquartered in New York and recognized as a Top Digital Health Company by CB Insights, as well as a Most Innovative Company by FastCompany, Empathy has raised $43 million in funding from leading investors including General Catalyst, Aleph VC, and Entrée Capital. To learn more about Empathy, visit us at empathy.com.
About Family First
Family First is the first expert-led and technology-powered caregiving support benefit, integrating expert care teams and clinical and social determinants of health data to create holistic, comprehensive, and accurate care plans that solve members’ most urgent caregiving needs. Powered by industry-leading technology, Family First combines 30 years of hands-on experience, a multi-disciplinary team of experts, and an artificial intelligence engine that analyzes data from millions of people to ensure members have the caregiving solutions they need — and their loved ones are on the right care path. Learn more at www.family-first.com.
