Care at Scale

Bank of America has been reinventing retirement planning under the leadership of Lorna Sabbia, the Head of Retirement and Personal Wealth Solutions. They’ve been building new internal mindsets around aging and financial health at the company, including hiring a financial gerontologist to provide training and education, partnering with Khan Academy to create financial literacy videos, and conducting research to support and plan for aging women, in particular.

In January of 1969, community activist and dancer Ruth Beckford-Smith was instrumental in the launch of the Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast Program. This small, but radical act–to make sure every kid in Oakland was fed a decent breakfast–eventually led to the federal free breakfast program. Today, this program operates in about 90,000 schools and feeds over 11 million kids across the country every single school day.

Under the guidance of Stephen Kramer, Bright Horizons has emerged as a trailblazer in fostering employer investment in child care–a critical step for the industry. Research by The Holding Co. and McKinsey projects a $9.7 billion market for employer care benefits; Bright Horizons has been a leader in accessing these funds for working parents by leveraging employer-sponsored centers, enterprise contracts, backup care services, and more.

The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy is the care movement’s political champion. In 2020, the CFFE PAC ran a $30 million effort that turned out voters by communicating about economic issues, like paid family leave, lower cost prescriptions and affordable care, successfully electing candidates who will work to pass family friendly policies at the national level. The program spanned 10 states and used robust field, mail and digital investments to make nearly 16 million voter contact attempts.

Carina, led by founding Executive Director Nidhi Mirani and board member Melissah Watts, was born out of SEIU's recognition of the massive opportunity for technology to improve the experience of care workers and seekers. The independent nonprofit organization, created in 2016, provides care searching and matching infrastructure for government programs, like Medicaid in Washington State, and ensures that home care workers are informed and supported to do their best work.

Republican Senator Bob Dole shaped the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which included the introduction of the child tax credit. Between 2020 and 2021, the credit — which gave monthly payments of up to $300 per child — helped reduce child poverty by more than 40%. More than 36 million families received the credit in 2021, and the money helped push the child poverty rate below that of adults for the first time in American history.

In 1995, John Marick and Greg Pryor founded Consumer Cellular with a focus on users over 50. Through their no-contract cell phone plans they delivered an unprecedented level of flexibility. Their approach has made it easier for older adults, a market few were prioritizing, to have cell phones, and their strategic partnerships with companies like AARP have further lowered the barriers to entry. Consumer Cellular now has over 4 million subscribers nationwide and has won numerous consumer awards.

From affordable hearing aids to eye glasses, and even coffins, the warehouse club has served its customers well by focusing on affordable products that make life and caring for loved ones easier. Most recently, Costco announced member access to physicians online through a partnership with the telehealth marketplace, Sesame. Under W. Craig Jelinek's leadership, Costco's total sales in recent fiscal years has exceeded $192 billion and continues to serve millions of loyal members worldwide.

Ed Roberts was the first student with severe disabilities to attend UC Berkeley in the 1960s. He and his fellow disability justice activists demolished curbs and laid asphalt at night to create curb cuts, all the while demanding that the federal government expand accessibility in the built environment. Their radical action, coupled with the pressure put on lawmakers from returning veterans, led to the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, which marked the dawn of a new day in mobility.

CVS Health has been scaling its focus on care, both by acquiring companies centered on this mission and focusing on their own solutions like MinuteClinic, which has more than 1,000 locations nationwide. Shoppers at CVS retail locations also can access care from immunizations to disease management. EVP and Chief Medical Officer Sree Chaguturu, MD, helps ensure all CVS Health clinicians place patients at the center of care, no matter where they need to access it. We can't wait to see what's next.

Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, a longtime public health advocate, leads one of the nation’s most ambitious attempts yet to improve the quality of life for the 6.7 million Americans living with dementia and their caregivers. The Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience (GUIDE) Model will help people remain in their homes through care coordination, caregiver education, and respite support. GUIDE is a key deliverable from President Biden’s Executive Order on Increasing Access to High-Quality Care.

Scott Bomar, the former VP of Services at Home Depot, played a pivotal role in developing the Independent Living program. This initiative, offering in-home consultations and equipment installation through a partnership with National Seating & Mobility, is tailored to address the needs of the growing population of those facing mobility challenges. Further, by providing resources and solutions that support aging in place, Home Depot is contributing to the safety and comfort of seniors.

Distinct from the home and from work, libraries serve as a welcoming third place for so many populations, including elders, children, and the unhoused. John Cotton Dana, a public librarian for over 40 years, helped transform libraries from book-lending institutions to the community centers we know and love today. Dana introduced open access to the shelves, reading rooms, exhibits, lectures, and cultural programs.

More than 300 PACE centers serve more than 70,700 participants across the country, including those who want to age in place, but still need critical services, veterans, and rural Americans. PACE was born in the early 1970s, when the Chinatown-North Beach community of San Francisco saw the pressing needs for long-term care services by families with immigrant elders and created the first version of this dignifying model with Dr. William L. Gee and Marie-Louise Ansak at the helm.

Tawni L. Nazario-Cranz, then Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, led the parental leave movement in 2015 in corporate America by spearheading the development of Netflix's pioneering policy. Allowing up to one year of paid leave, it surpassed industry standards. The move underscored a cultural shift, prioritizing employee well-being and establishing Netflix as a trendsetter in progressive workplace policies.

Yoky Matsuoka leads global innovation at PanasonicWELL to help families live healthier and happier lives. As CEO of PanaosnicWELL and CEO & Founder of Yohana, Matsuoka has merged her technical background, experience building consumer products, and the challenges as a working mother, to build technology that will help families thrive. She is that rare technologist who also deeply understands the potential of the care market and is positioned within a company with significant scale.

Rachel Schumacher leads the Raising Child Care Fund, an initiative that pools private foundation dollars to give grants to grassroots organizations—three-fourths of them led by people of color—in the fight for high quality and accessible childcare for everyone. By the end of 2022, under Rachel Schumacher's leadership, the fund had enabled community organizers in 17 states to lift voices, build power, and expand equity in demanding and creating solutions to this ongoing crisis.

Housing designed with multiple generations in mind is still in short supply, despite being an increasing norm for families trying to take care for loved ones. Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) represent a notable exception. Through new legislation, financial incentives, and a streamlined approval process, the state of California aims to confront housing challenges by enhancing ADU accessibility and affordability, positioning California at the forefront of addressing familial housing needs.

When the childcare cliff hit, states scrambled to figure out how to support working families. Kentucky adopted an innovative approach by extending free child care eligibility to all child care employees, irrespective of household income. A year after making this change in licensing regulations, the number of children receiving state subsidies for child care increased by approximately 135%. It's only a matter of time before other states follow suit.

There is no more foundational form of care than ensuring that families have choices when it comes to their reproductive future and access to quality medical care. Upstream, founded by Mark Edwards in 2014, is a nonprofit that partners with states to provide training and technical assistance to health centers to ensure all women have same-day access to the birth control method of their choice at low or no cost. They’re on track to serve over 1 million women across 4 states by the end of the year.

Common Sense Media has been helping parents navigate the ever-evolving landscape of media and technology since 2003. Their role as a trusted source of age-based reviews for 148 million families is complemented by their advocacy efforts, including getting 10 million families connected to high-speed internet through the Affordable Connectivity Program.

Before the advent of the electric washing machine, laundry was a time-consuming and physically demanding task, often taking up to four hours of a woman's day. Alva J. Fisher changed everything in 1907 when he put the pieces together to patent the first electric washing machine, The Thor. The introduction of the Thor by the Hurley Machine Company, revolutionized the way laundry was done, reducing the time spent on this chore to just 41 minutes, thus giving women back a substantial amount of time.

Unpredictable work hours impact U.S. workers, particularly those in low-wage industries. Volatile hours not only mean volatile incomes, but stress for families as they try to plan care. In 2017, Oregon became the first U.S. state to require certain businesses to furnish workers with a week’s notice of their job schedules and a minimum of 10 hours rest between daily shifts. The Fair Work Week Act set a new bar on what states should be doing for low-wage workers; many cities have followed suit.

Under Corie Barry’s leadership, Best Buy has been on the cutting edge of corporate commitment to caregiving. Over the years, they have acquired platforms, like Great Call and Current Health, to support home-based healthcare services, enabling the delivery of hospital-level care in the home and to reduce emotional and financial burdens on patients and caregivers. The world is taking notice; recently, Mass General Brigham has tapped Best Buy Health to help scale their healthcare at home services.