INTRO
In the world of family benefits, the greatest barrier to care isn’t usually a lack of resources—it’s the gap between a member’s moment of crisis and their first request for help. Traditional support models are reactive, often waiting for overwhelmed families to raise their hands while they are already underwater. But what happens when we increase the frequency of our connection points?
The benefits of a proactive approach is best demonstrated by leveraging the Family Health Index™ (FHI) to identify high-risk members in real-time. The results were astounding: These strategic touchpoints and proactive outreaches don’t just increase engagement—they can change the entire trajectory of a family’s health journey.
Here’s how this proactive approach is redefining risk mitigation for the modern workforce.
Reaching members when they need it most
For many healthcare and benefits platforms, support is often reactive. While Cleo has always prioritized member outreach, we prioritized more consistent touchpoints for high-risk populations—those scoring in the “Nurture” range on Cleo’s Family Health Index (FHI). Within these groups, relying solely on member-initiated support can lead to significant delays in care.
Cleo recognizes that increasing the number of proactive outreaches—rather than waiting for the member to reach out—means capturing a critical window for intervention that might otherwise be missed.
A proactive, risk-stratified intervention
To bridge this gap, Cleo used the Family Health Index to identify and build a strategy based the hypothesis that adding more touchpoints across multiple channels—including phone calls—would drive significantly higher meaningful engagement.
The workflow was designed around rapid identification and immediate action:
- Immediate identification: Automated notifications triggered Guide alerts as soon as a member completed a Family Health Index assessment with high-risk results.
- Rapid outreach: Guides were tasked with reaching out within 10 days, offering a dedicated “Family Health Index Walkthrough Call” to review results together.
- Strategic triage: Using a “See, Normalize, Prioritize, Act” framework, Guides helped members normalize their experiences, stay connected, and identify a single high-impact focus area.
- Integrated care handoffs: Using a “See, Normalize, Prioritize, Act” framework, Guides helped members normalize their experiences, stay connected, and identify a single high-impact focus area.
Faster action and deeper engagement
The results demonstrated what Cleo has known for a long time: More proactivity is the key to identifying and activating high-risk members. Compared to the baseline, messaging engagement jumped to 41.7% (and as high as 54.5% in the initial cohort). Session completion also saw a significant boost, reaching 29.2% overall.
Beyond the numbers, this strategy revealed how consistent engagement creates a fundamental shift in member behavior:
- Speed to engagement: By proactively reaching out more often, Cleo reduced the time to first engagement to just 3.1 days on average.
- Breadth of support: Engagement was not limited to a single channel. Members who received proactive outreach took an average of 1.9 unique actions, engaging across Group Classes, Care Activity Team (CAT), and additional specialized assessments.
- Holistic impact: The signal from the data was clear—early outreach drives early action, helping families navigate complex needs before they escalate into larger health or productivity issues.
WHY THIS MATTERS
A scalable safety net for the highest risk
Triage for Complex Stressors:
One high-risk member scoring in the “Nurture” range across six of seven dimensions was contacted by their Cleo Guide immediately after completing their Family Health Index assessment. Within two weeks, through consistent follow-up, the member had engaged with both their Guide and a Health & Wellbeing Coach to address a complex set of stressors, including fertility, family relationships, and anxiety. This multi-touch intervention provided the member with a clear path to healing and growth that they likely would not have found outside of Cleo.
Rapid Support for Growing Families:
When a member scored high-risk while growing their family, their Cleo Guide initiated a walkthrough call that identified newborn feeding and pregnancy weight gain as primary stressors. Within just 10 days, the proactive outreach had connected the member with four different team members, including a Health & Wellbeing Coach and feeding and sleep specialists, ensuring the family had the specialized support they needed to manage their new dynamic.
Scalable Risk Mitigation:
Beyond individual success stories, a strategy that stays ahead of the curve demonstrates a powerful value proposition for employers: the ability to move from reactive benefits to proactive risk mitigation. Cleo helps prevent common stressors—like caregiving burden or mental health strain—from escalating into costly clinical crises or significant productivity loss. The data confirms that this proactive approach doesn’t just change the channel of communication, it changes member behavior. Activated members took an average of 1.9 unique actions, engaging with everything from group classes to specialist consultations. For the customer, this means:
- Rapid impact: Reaching “at-risk” families and driving meaningful action within just 3 days of a need being identified.
- Higher ROI on benefits: Driving higher utilization of existing high-value interventions like Health & Wellbeing Coaches and Clinical Specialists.
- Data-driven support: Leveraging a risk-stratified outreach strategy that ensures your most vulnerable employees aren’t just offered support but are actively guided to it.
By automating these successes, Cleo provides a scalable way to ensure no high-risk family falls through the cracks, turning a standard benefit into an even more robust safety net for the modern workforce.
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