The state recently reached a rideshare milestone in its partnership with GoGoGrandparent, an on-demand transportation and delivery service platform designed to offer older adults greater independence at no cost.
The state of Montana has partnered with GoGoGrandparent, a transportation and delivery service platform, to ensure its older residents have access to the resources and online amenities they need.Digital inclusion work for older adults changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as more services moved to the Internet. But this population faces its own unique barriers to online access as more services become digitized.The platform is free to residents 60 years of age and older and, importantly, can be accessed without a smartphone or app — an area in which older adults sometimes face access challenges. Instead, customers can reach its services directly through a phone call to GoGoGrandparent and resolve a variety of needs, from prescription and grocery delivery to transportation.
“Our goal in providing these services is to help older adults remain as independent as possible in their homes,” Kerrie Reidelbach, director of the State Unit on Aging within the Montana Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement June 9.Montana’s program, which is federally funded, launched in Yellowstone and Fergus counties in August 2024, and has since expanded to Lewis and Clark, Broadwater, Gallatin, Silver Bow, and Jefferson counties. In May, it reached the milestone of delivering more than 750 monthly rides.There are many ways governments can use the insights provided by the platform to better understand and serve their residents, and officials are “keenly interested” in the data, according to an email from Andy Pillsbury, director of business development for GoGoGrandparent.
“For example, our trips data show different clusters of uses such as trips to dialysis, low-cost health clinics, affordable senior housing complexes, and grocery stores,” he said.In one use case, the company has worked with a dialysis clinic to facilitate long-distance trips to the clinic from a reservation. In another, staffers created a heat map for a government customer in California’s Bay Area to see where the program was being used.“Officials identified some underserved areas that were not using the program as frequently as they would like and took steps to increase usage of the program in those areas,” Pillsbury said of that customer.The company works with local transportation providers and screens drivers to ensure they can meet accessibility needs of older adults, such as providing assistance with walkers.