Kaiser Permanente’s Ginger App offers digital mental care options

Kaiser Permanente announced it is expanding its digital mental health care options to include emotional support coaching. Kaiser Permanente adult members in Hawaiʻi now have access to a no-cost, 90-day subscription to Ginger, a leading on-demand mental wellness solutions provider. 

Ginger offers confidential, emotional support through on-demand coaching via text-based chats and skills-building content. Starting today, eligible Kaiser Permanente members can use their smartphone to connect with a highly trained emotional support coach 24/7 – at no cost and with no referral or appointment needed.

The private, one-on-one texting sessions provide support for coping with common challenges such as managing stress or getting better sleep. 

“Kaiser Permanente selected Ginger to help provide pre-clinical coaching and support for those experiencing emotional distress,” said John Yang, MD, president and medical director, Hawaiʻi Permanente Medical Group in a news release from the health care provider. “The addition of Ginger expands Kaiser Permanente’s commitment to preventive care, seeking to provide our members with immediate, personalized emotional support to help manage many of life’s challenges and stressors.”

Emotional support coaching can provide in-the-moment support and may be able to reduce symptoms to prevent more serious health conditions from developing. With the Ginger app, Kaiser Permanente members can: 

• Text with a coach anytime, anywhere, 24/7 for 90 days  
• Discuss goals, share challenges, and create an action plan with their coach 
• Get personalized, interactive skill-building tools from a library of more than 200 clinically validated activities and resources 
• View recaps from each texting session, track their progress and work with their coach to adjust action plans as needed  

Hawaiʻi is the third Kaiser Permanente market to make Ginger available to its members this year, following Colorado, which launched in March and Mid-Atlantic, which launched in May. Ginger will be made available to all Kaiser Permanente markets later this year.

Eligible members can access the Ginger app via kp.org/coachingapps/hi and clicking on the “Get Ginger” button found on the page. Members will be prompted to sign on using their kp.org user ID and password and then will be taken to Ginger where they can complete their registration and begin accessing coaching and additional resources.

The 90-day, no-cost subscription to Ginger begins when the member activates their account.  

Research suggests that coaching can help drive behavior changes and improvement in participants in 8-12 weeks. Eligible members will have unlimited access to text-based coaching during the 90-day subscription.

Once the subscription period ends, members will continue to see their chat history and will be able to use Ginger’s extensive self-care library to work on the skills they learned through coaching and will also have access to other digital self-care tools and support from Kaiser Permanente.  

One year after initial activation, members will have the opportunity to start another 90-day subscription at no cost.

In 2020, Kaiser Permanente added the first two apps to its digital self-care portfolio: Calm, a leading app for mindfulness meditation, and myStrength, an app designed to help people improve well-being and enhance sleep or mood. These digital self-help tools are in addition to, not a replacement for, treatment services provided by Kaiser Permanente’s mental health care clinicians.