Unbox Recovery presents a digital wallet that offers financial incentives to opioid patients participating in recovery programs. It addresses the persisting opioid crisis in the United States, by applying traceability to $500,000 of SAMHSA funding, in Gary, Indiana.
Tackling the Opioid Crisis with The FaithWorks Wallet
In 2020, opioids were implicated in 75% of 91,799 drug overdose deaths. The FaithWorks Wallet facilitates swift, transparent, and trackable distribution of incentives in the form of programmable tokens, the Ucoin, thereby promoting financial inclusion, especially for the unbanked. Unbox Recovery takes aim at improving recovery rates, stimulating local economies, and contributing to reduced healthcare expenses.
Contingency management (CM) is comprised of behavioral interventions that provide rewards quickly in response to at least one measurable behavior towards recovery. Research has shown it results in significantly enhanced retention in treatment, with 49% of the contingency management groups completing 12 weeks of treatment vs only 35% the standard care groups. However, distribution of incentives is fraught with issues, resulting in it being underutilized. Some of the issues include: lack of ability to distribute financial incentives to the unbanked, no traceability of taxpayer dollars, fraud, privacy concerns for patients, burdensome reporting, and no sustainable improvement to the local economy.
Unbox Recovery is has been launched in Gary, Indiana. Gary is one of the hardest hit areas in the Mid-West, previously ranking murder capital of the world, and currently has the lowest life expectancy in the United States. Unbox have supplied FaithWorks with the technology to solve the current limitation and issues allowing them to scale their contingency management efforts.
FaithWorks on Gary: Relentless Faith Series
The wallet's embedded proof-of-presence technology confirms an individual's attendance at recovery programs. Patients validate their attendance by scanning a one-time data matrix produced by the clinic, with fraud prevention being key to success patients must be within a 10-meter geofenced location of the clinic for the data matrix to be ‘open’.
Patients on our platform receive Ucoin tokens, which can be programmed with a specific RuleSet dictating how they are earned and spent. By nature of the RuleSets that are assigned to the tokens it ensures targeted funding, directing federal funds and donor contributions to the local businesses that need them most. Targeted distribution will have a significant economic impact by keeping funds within the economy they were meant for, creating a positive ripple effect on the community. By leveraging web3 technologies and infrastructure, we ensure complete traceability and transparency of government funding and financial transactions.
Unbox Addiction combines functional design with user-centric qualities:
1. Community
Ucoins are programmed with a RuleSet dictating how they are spent, directing funds to the local business ensures projects leave a sustainable impact.
2. User-Friendly Interface
We gave special attention to accessibility, ensuring users with limited financial or technological experience can navigate the platform. The design ensures that even those with low literacy can comfortably/intuitively control the user interface. Furthermore, our identity management system means that users do not need an email address or need any web3 experience to seemly onboard, reducing the barrier to entry.
3. Inclusive
The design of application is critical to mitigate risks with vulnerable users. The design is crafted to ensure a non-threatening and trusting environment, ensuring users weary of technology feel comfortable. Patients spending their Ucoins in person-to-person transactions at community merchants meant it was vital to remove user stigma. The user journey, wording, and interface were carefully crafted to eliminate program details to merchant accounts, and payments interactions.
4. Accessible
The application also works on 2G environments - we believe that true digital inclusion means making cutting-edge technology available to those with limited connectivity. While it is impressive to have technology that runs on 5G, ignoring 75% of the global population means it's not truly successful. The UI was designed in a unique way to minimise operating data requirements.
The platform enables financial inclusion for the unbanked, allowing individuals with no fixed address or financial footprint to securely receive and transact funds. Possible because Ucoins only carry purchasing power within a closed-loop system, rather than storing value like traditional currency, thereby promoting economic empowerment. This is significant hurdle in addressing the opioid crisis - about 5.9 million households were unbanked in the U.S. in 2021.
To protect individuals' privacy, our wallet employs cryptographically secure web3 self- sovereign identity management (MyUnbox), ensuring that with full traceability of funds and transactions, individuals' privacy is not compromised. Users' actions are attached to a hardware tagged identity rather personal details (such as name, address, email, phone number, Facebook account, etc.), they then have full control over the cryptographically secure private data, choses what they want to share, to whom, and for how long.
2023 Banking Tech Awards Finalists - FinTech for Good
"Unbox's platform puts the power back in the hands of the community to drive real change from the grassroots level," said Erik SAELENS, CEO at Unbox. "The decentralized model provides transparency, accountability and accessibility for distributing these vital funds where they are needed most - directly to the members of the Gary community who need support."
Watch the full interview - Here