CareAcademy, the leading home care & home health workforce empowerment platform, upskilling and preparing workers for the growing eldercare market and home care model, today announced it has closed $9.5 million in financing led by Impact America Fund (IAF). The new capital will be used to continue expanding the platform and help one million Americans reskill for healthcare work, particularly in light of COVID-19 and the growing aging population that seeks to age in place. IAF is joined by Rethink Impact, ReThink Education, Revolution Rise of the Rest, Wanxiang America Healthcare Investment, Techstars Ventures, Strada and ECMC. As part of the Series A round, IAF Founder and General Partner Kesha Cash and Dr. Ivor Horn, former chief medical officer of Accolade Health, join CareAcademy's Board of Directors.

"We are thrilled to have a group of investors who see the untapped potential of direct care workers and who believe in CareAcademy to help unleash that opportunity in this critical time for healthcare," said Helen Adeosun, co-founder and chief executive officer, CareAcademy. "We started CareAcademy in 2016 with a simple idea: to empower caregivers to learn how to deliver the best care to older adults with the support, guidance, and compassion needed to improve their quality of life. We would then make it easy for caregivers to 'upskill' and continue their education over time so they could better serve clients as needs changed and advance their careers. Now more than ever, in the wake of COVID-19 there is a need to provide safe alternatives to facility based care. We're preparing the next generation of one million direct care workers to meet the needs of older adults."

The number of individuals aged 65+ is projected to double from 703 million in 2019 to 1.5 billion globally by 2050. In response to this expected growth, Grand View Research predicts the home healthcare market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.9 percent between 2020 and 2027. With an aging baby boomer population who have more complex health needs, the need for a well-trained home care workforce will only continue to grow. As the demand for adequately trained home care workers grows in response to this trend, so will the need to ensure they have the highest quality training and resources to deliver the very best care to older adults.

CareAcademy is looking to provide the best platform for the discovery, on boarding, equipping, management, retention, and assurance of healthcare professionals and family caregivers to effectively help those who need them. Its online training empowers senior care professionals to deliver the highest caliber of service and improve the lives of older adults. As an end-to-end, scalable training solution, the company transforms home care businesses into efficient industry leaders through its advanced reporting and training management dashboard. Currently, CareAcademy has provided skills training and upskilling for 110,000 caregivers with approximately 400,000 classes completed to date.

The Series A funding will enable CareAcademy to scale opportunities for direct care workers to upskill, drive healthcare outcomes measurements, onboard, and retain direct care workers for long term care, and ensure they are able to work throughout the healthcare continuum.

CareAcademy currently serves the country's largest care franchise companies in home care, including Sodexo Comfort Keepers, Home Helpers, Home Care Assistance and LivHome Arosa, and has established industry first technical integrations with Clearcare and Alayacare that allow for workers to be employed within home care and home health.

Quotes:

Kesha Cash, founder and general partner, Impact America Fund: "By putting caregivers at the center of its product and curriculum, CareAcademy is demonstrating that there's a better way to recruit, train, and retain care workers in the home care and home health care industry. That's exciting to us - because an empowered care worker means a healthier client, a happier employer, and, at scale, a superior healthcare system. Helen, Dr. Reddy, and the CareAcademy team have built a platform that is flexible, online and on-the-go, and we think it's poised to capture a massive and growing market opportunity that's also essential to the public health and economic well-being of our society as a whole."

Heidi Patel, managing partner, Rethink Impact: "COVID-19 has only accelerated the growing trend of the elderly and others wanting to age in place and receive care at home. CareAcademy fulfills a critical aspect of providing that care safely and effectively, while expanding economic opportunity for the majority female and immigrant careworker community. At Rethink Impact, we believe that the next generation of successful businesses will be at the forefront of healthcare innovation and there's no one better positioned to lead that work than CareAcademy CEO and Harvard EdM, Helen Adeosun."

Helen Adeosun, co-founder and chief executive officer, CareAcademy: "We are committed to turning caregivers into engaged and knowledgeable patient advocates with workforce tools to easily track progress to ensure that caregivers have the right skills. Through flexible, 24/7 support, we also give our customers peace of mind that they are getting the best software-based solution on the market to enable the future of healthcare work. We do all this while providing caregivers with a convenient and intuitive platform that is both easy to use and accessible across all devices. As we witness millions of professional and family caregivers already standing in the gap of care, CareAcademy is the platform that will enable the future of health and the future of work."

Dr. Madhuri Reddy, co-founder and chief medical officer, CareAcademy: "We have the ability, for example, to train home care workers as dementia specialists to work in the homes of millions who suffer from Alzheimer's and other dementias. Our specialist certifications allow for direct care workers to upskill and become more involved in better care plan management, and there is no greater time for this upskilling than now. With the fastest growing population rising globally and a massive clinical shortage, we're building a way for millions of direct care workers to be empowered as health extenders. We are in the midst of a perfect storm (dire shortage of adequately trained caregivers, patients with COVID-19 and it's sequelae, and trying to avoid facility-based care and the infectious risks of communal living) that allows us to envision what our healthcare system can look like."

About CareAcademy

CareAcademy creates online training that empowers senior care professionals to deliver the highest caliber of service and improve the lives of older adults. More than 110,000+ home care workers are learning and growing professionally through CareAcademy. Coupled with its advanced reporting, portability, and training management dashboard, CareAcademy is an end-to-end, scalable training solution that transforms home care businesses into efficient industry leaders. To learn more, schedule a demonstration: https://careacademy.com/.

About Impact America Fund

Impact America Fund is the largest Black woman-led impact venture capital firm in the U.S. that invests with a racial equity lens. The firm's mission is to create a future where low- and moderate-income workers, consumers, business owners, and communities of color experience true agency and participation in the American economy. Impact America Fund invests in tech-driven businesses that create new frameworks of opportunity and ownership in communities and sectors that have been chronically underserved and undervalued. For more information, visit www.impactamericafund.com.