New York City-based Unite Us, a technology company focused on connecting healthcare and social service providers, has acquired NowPow, which offers a personalized community referral platform, for an undisclosed amount.

Together, the companies aim to reduce the fragmentation that exists between health and social care networks to enable better care coordination.

Chicago-based NowPow’s tools and community partners will be integrated into the Unite Us closed-loop referral system, which can be used by clinicians to screen for social factors that negatively affect health, like food or housing insecurity, and electronically refer patients to community-based organizations that can help address those needs.

The Unite Us platform notes if the community organization was able to provide the needed social service, and if it was not, the platform suggests alternate resources.

NowPow’s tools are similar, enabling care teams to screen patients for social determinants of health and providing referrals to social services, such as food banks and rental assistance agencies.

“This unification [of the two companies] accelerates our ability to create a more seamless solution that improves people’s lives,” said Dan Brillman, co-founder and CEO of Unite Us, in an email. “The partnership combines geographical reach and technology capabilities for a scaled community-based social determinants of health solution nationwide.”

The fully integrated product will debut in 2022, as there will be a transition period while the companies determine how best to combine capabilities.

Brillman neither disclosed the price tag of the acquisition nor the expected revenues of the combined company, only saying that “this acquisition presents an outsized opportunity for both companies that could not be achieved independently.”

The NowPow acquisition comes about a month after Unite Us bought Carrot Health, which leverages its dataset of consumer and health information to make predictive models for health behaviors and outcomes.

As a result, NowPow will gain access to Carrot Health’s data solutions that predict needs, enroll clients in services and measure impact, Brillman said.

As health inequities grow, especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic, incorporating social determinants of health data into clinical care is vital. Research shows that addressing social factors that negatively affect health can help close those equity gaps.

“Needs are rising fast and our partnership with Unite Us accelerates our shared vision to ensure everyone, everywhere knows where to go for resources in their community,” said Dr. Stacy Lindau, founder and chief innovation officer at NowPow, in a news release.

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