Investors just made a $35 million bet on a startup that wants to help people find food and housing to keep them healthy

• Unite Us, a health-tech company that wants to help connect health systems to services like housing and food with the hope of keeping people healthier and out of the hospital, just raised another $35 million.
• The hope is to improve on a process that already happens over the phone or through written-down referrals in a way that speeds up the process and tracks the outcomes.
• Health plans are looking at new ways to keep their members healthy that include paying for patients' rents and promoting better eating habits.

Nancy Brown, a partner at venture firm Oak HC/FT, remembers talking with a potential investment about an interesting correlation the company had found in its data: There was a link between a lack of dependable housing and preterm labor.

That meant that if pregnant women could get stable housing, the rates of early labor might fall, resulting in healthier moms and babies.

The next question Brown had for the company: "Now what?"

The company's response left her dissatisfied, Brown recalled. The company, which Brown didn't identify, suggested that it would take changes to government policies to make more housing available.

Instead, Brown went in search of a company to help fix the problem.

Unite Us started by working with veterans

That led her to Unite Us, a New York-based health-tech company that got its start helping veterans in need of housing, employment, and other services upon their return home from service.

Co-founder Dan Brillman, an Air Force reserve pilot, said that while he was in business school, his friends would ask him for advice, and he wouldn't know where to send them. It'd lead him down a rabbit hole of calling local social services, who would pass him along to whomever they happened to know in their networks.

Ultimately, the experience led him and his cofounders to start Unite Us, which builds out networks of social services providers, to connect them to health plans and health systems. Unite Us gets paid by states, health systems, insurers or other clients, and there's no cost to the individuals benefiting from the services.

Unite Us's focus is on better connecting healthcare to the "social determinants of health," which are the external factors like your environment or socioeconomic status that can affect your health.

Oak HC/FT led the $35 million funding round

On Tuesday, the company announced that it's raised an additional $35 million from investors including Oak HC/FT, Town Hall Ventures, Define Ventures, and Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest raises for a company in the social determinants space. It brings Unite Us's total funding to $45 million.

The hope is that through Unite Us's platform, healthcare organizations looking to incorporate social determinants into how they care for patients will have the infrastructure to do that with a system that doesn't rely on verbal referrals and post-it notes.

"This will blow it wide open," Brown said.

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Here's how it works: Unite Us links up with a client in a state or community that acts as the catalyst. For instance,Unite Us is working with North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services. From there, Unite Us goes out to connect government agencies and nonprofits that provide housing, employment, food, social work, and other services.

Unite Us helps connect people to food, housing and employment

Then, when a person comes in at some point- say, a doctor's visit, or via a social worker - the software could connect them to other resources they might need as well, such as food services or help with employment, with that individual's consent. That way the referral is tracked, as well as the outcomes. The individual can also access their information via a portal.

Brillman has seen a connection that might've taken 16 days to complete offline cut down to less than a day through Unite Us's platform.

It's happening at a time when health plans are looking at new ways to keep their members healthy.

Housing, food, and transportation can all make a big difference to your health

Increasingly, that has less to do with doctor's visits, and more to do with housing, food, transportation, and other less obvious factors that play in a role in your health. In May, healthcare company Kaiser Permanente committed $200 million to reduce homelessness, and UnitedHealth Group has a similar affordable housing initiative.

While it might feel like affordable housing falls a bit outside healthcare companies' purview, Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard J. Tyson has an explanation.

"We can clearly show the returns from the way we are organized," Tyson told Business Insider in a September 2018 interview. That's especially the case for Kaiser Permanente, a 70-year-old nonprofit health system and insurer based around the US on the West Coast and through the Mid-Atlantic region.

The way Brown sees it, as state and local governments pour resources into social services but don't see the impact, a service like Unite Us could come in handy.

"It's a real governor's type initiative," Brown said. "This is an absolute, undeniable need."

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