CaringBridge and Instacart Partner to Deliver Community-Led Access to Groceries, Household Essentials and Meals
CaringBridge, a nonprofit health platform and Instacart, the leading grocery technology company in North America, have partnered to allow easier community-led support for groceries and essentials for family caregivers and their loved ones. Users on the CaringBridge platform now have the option to use Instacart to send and receive groceries and other key household items like pharmacy supplies and over-the-counter medications, pet food, beauty staples, electronics and more from local, regional and national retailers across the country. Instacart reaches more than 98 percent of US households, as well as 95 percent of those located in low-access areas commonly known as food deserts, offering easier access to essentials for caregivers and patients.
Through the new partnership, CaringBridge has offered guidance on the grocery items caregivers and patients most often need, through a CaringBridge Virtual Storefront on Instacart. Caregivers and their loved ones can also build personalized lists with favorite items from their preferred retailers, allowing them to share these lists with their communities – both near and far – to help them restock supplies or meet unique needs of specific dietary plans or occasions. Instacart offers tools that help support caregivers like Instacart Health Care Carts – through Instacart’s gifting functionality – a tool that allows anyone to order and send items from the more than 1,500 retailers on Instacart directly to someone they’d like to support. Once an order is placed, recipients have the ability to schedule their delivery window and track the order. Instacart facilitates online grocery shopping and same-day delivery from partner retailers, providing convenient access to fresh and nutritious food and household items, removing a trip to the store which can sometimes be challenging or impossible while managing their health and wellness.
This new partnership gives CaringBridge users even more ways to meet nutritional needs and adds to the benefits of Meal Train which already exists within the CaringBridge platform.
“Access to nutritious food is essential for health and well-being, and Instacart empowers caregivers and loved ones to meet each individual’s unique needs with ease,” said Sarah Mastrorocco, Vice President and General Manager of Health at Instacart. “Our partnership with CaringBridge enables us to make caregiving more seamless, helping people provide and receive meaningful support in their daily lives. From delivering a few much-needed essentials to stocking up on a full week’s groceries, Instacart helps transform simple gestures into impactful acts of care.”
“We know that food requests are one of the top asks for support from family caregivers to their communities,” said Tia Newcomer, CaringBridge CEO. “Food helps healing, and so we’re thrilled to be able to expand the ways in which nutritional needs of both family caregivers and their loved ones are met during a health journey. Caregivers face incredibly complex challenges throughout a health journey – from feelings of isolation and overwhelm to emotional exhaustion from being ‘always on’. This partnership with Instacart helps alleviate that burden by providing instrumental support while also allowing for personalization of dietary needs in support of any health journey.”
Communities often struggle with how to help caregivers and loved ones and what action to take. Food related requests are one of the most impactful ways a visitor to CaringBridge can positively impact the journey of a loved one or supporting caregiver.
Access to Instacart is available via CaringBridge.org today and via the CaringBridge iOS app later this month.