The COVID-19 pandemic presented an unprecedented set of barriers to overcome, especially in regards to people’s health.

Since the start, Castlight has been committed to helping our customers, their employees, and their employees’ family members navigate this difficult, ever-evolving challenge, just as we help them navigate several other aspects of the healthcare system on a daily basis.

We built out a comprehensive in-app COVID-19 resource center, which includes a symptom checker, a test site finder, and a return-to-workplace solution called Working Well. In addition, we conducted personalized outreach to members in vulnerable populations and made our behavioral health solution available to our customers.

Now that COVID-19 vaccines are available, employers understandably have questions about what steps they should take in regards to vaccination initiatives within their workforce. Recently, we surveyed a group of customers and learned that:

• Most employers agree vaccines will be critical: The majority of customers indicated that COVID-19 vaccinations are a high priority for their organizations’ human resources or employee wellbeing strategies in 2021.
• Employers are prioritizing vaccine access, education, and proactive outreach: Rather than mandating the vaccine, many are focusing on promoting vaccine literacy, supporting distribution, and offering incentives for receiving the vaccine. Some larger employers may also offer the vaccine to their employees through onsite or near-site health clinics or local health systems, when the distribution phase allows.
• Communication is key: Employers recognize that getting the accurate information to employees will be critical and plan to use many different types of communication. More than half plan to leverage Castlight and many will rely on executive communications.

We are dedicated to assisting our customers in this part of the healthcare navigation journey. Starting this February, there will be a COVID-19 Vaccine Navigation feature embedded directly into the Castlight app. Not only will members be able to easily access vaccine-related resources from their Castlight homepage, but emails and in-app notifications will guide them to this important vaccine resource center, as well.

This centralized resource will provide educational content about topics like vaccine safety, effectiveness, and side effects, and there will also be a self-service chat feature that will help employees understand when and where they can get vaccinated. Vaccine confusion and hesitancy is prevalent, so having digestible, high-quality educational content to address this head-on is crucial.

Ultimately, the Vaccine Navigation offering will qualify and guide each member, providing them with the resources they need to understand if they’re eligible and directing them to available vaccine locations in their area. In addition, vulnerable populations that are at high-risk due to at least one underlying condition will receive tailored communications about the vaccine.

Because each company is unique, Castlight customers will be able to customize their vaccine support if they want to. For example, they can leverage existing Castlight functionalities to send targeted messages about important vaccine updates, and they can also include company-specific vaccine content — such as details about onsite clinics or company vaccination policies — within the programs and activities section of the app.

While COVID-19 has presented many challenges, we’re happy that we can continue to support our customers, members, and their families in navigating this next phase of the pandemic.