How Unite Us Advances Privacy and Dignity for Individuals Seeking Care

At Unite Us, our goal is to ensure every individual, no matter who they are or where they live, can access the critical services they need to live happy and healthy lives. We accomplish this by enabling providers across sectors to collaborate and connect the individuals they serve through our secure platform. By using our platform, providers can seamlessly connect community members to services that can improve their health and well-being. 

We believe that prioritizing the privacy and dignity of individuals seeking care is fundamental to the mission we share with our partners across communities. To that end, we’re sharing our vision of the rights we believe all individuals should have with respect to their social care information—and how all partners in this work can advance our shared goals to enable secure and seamless access to care. 

Unite Us has built our solution to center our core principles of privacy and dignity and these five fundamental rights for every person seeking care. Our platform features a robust consent process that is centered around the person seeking care. The consent form is translated into over forty languages and available in multiple formats to promote accessibility. We designed this consent model to protect client privacy and alleviate the challenges people face when seeking services. When accessing services through providers coordinating through our platform, individuals have the right to know what information is collected from their providers, the right to consent to the sharing of their information, the right to correct their information, the right to revoke consent to sharing their information, and the right to delete their information. 

In addition to these fundamental rights, individuals seeking care should trust that their information will be protected and secure. At Unite Us, we protect all social care information as though it were protected health information, employing the same security measures required by HIPAA for all data on our platform, regardless of where it originates. We also provide heightened protections for information subject to 42 CFR Part 2 and other federal and state protections, enabling providers that have historically been siloed to collaborate with their partners and improve outcomes. Our partners have welcomed this opportunity to securely connect across sectors: 

“Normally, we are not able to use any other platforms because they could jeopardize the safety of survivors of gender-based violence. Not being able to receive and make referrals through other platforms kept us siloed. This is the first community-based referral connector system that we’ve ever seen that would meet our qualifications and ensure survivor safety. Unite Us worked closely with us to ensure that this platform could work for our population. This partnership creates more referral pathways for healthcare and other community-based organizations to connect survivors to our services that might not have otherwise been referred.” – Executive Director of a Community Provider Serving Survivors of Domestic and Interpersonal Violence in Oregon

By providing the technology and resources to support secure coordination across sectors, we alleviate the burdens imposed on resource-constrained providers serving our communities. 

When we develop new features for our solutions, we always take into account community feedback to ensure that the individuals in need of care and community partners serving them are heard. We listen to our community partners to reflect our shared vision to promote seamless access to care that centers the individual. As one community partner shared: 

“Unite Us has successfully and easily linked families with whom I work and resources specific for their needs. I recently had a family with a variety of needs. The mother and her two children were living in a car but were able to get a home through a community program. Unfortunately, they did not have any furniture, lighting, clothing, or household goods. The mother was also interested in assistance in obtaining childcare and a job. The mother agreed to me entering her information into the Unite Us Platform. It took about five minutes or so. The mother was sent a text message from the program, where she had to give electronic permission for Unite Us to disseminate her information to the resources I had chosen. Within 24 hours, she was linked to a potential employer, financial resources, and community resources to meet their concrete needs. The mother has been so grateful for the resources and assistance.” – Social Worker in West Virginia

These five fundamental rights—coupled with solutions that protect social care information under the same strict protections required for protected health information—protect individuals’ privacy and help ensure that their social care needs are addressed. 

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