20 May Umergency App Expands to Serve Teens & Their Families
‘Umergency for High School Students’ provides essential safety & health tools while maintaining teens’ privacy & autonomy
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (May 20, 2022) – Parents are continually in a seemingly impossible balancing act between teen safety and teen autonomy – Seeking ways to help keep their older kids safe without stifling them with tracking devices, while giving them a sense of independence and privacy. To meet the challenge, Umergency, the award-winning safety app for college students and families, has just released Umergency For High School Students.
The app does not enable parental tracking, which is the major reason teens opt out of their family apps. Instead, Umergency provides students with a feeling of autonomy over navigating through any emergency.
The original Umergency app was created by a college mom, as a solution inspired by a terrifying situation she experienced when her daughter was severely injured far from home. Used over 85,000 times during the past year, this Best in Health Tech award-winning app has been keeping college families prepared to navigate any health or safety emergency – wherever they are.
According to the CDC, two in five teens suffer from a mental health challenge and one in four college age young adults visit the ER every year. Depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide among high school and college students are at an all-time high nationwide.
“Mental health issues continue to increase in kids of all ages. In addition, teens have the highest rate of car crashes of any group. During the past year, many of our college parents asked us to adapt Umergency for their high school kids as well,”
commented Gail Schenbaum, Umergency Co-Founder and CEO. “So we expanded the app’s functionality to support the specific needs of high schoolers and their families.”
To address these problems, Umergency offers a multi-faceted resource for both high school and college families. The app’s Urgent Alert button notifies a user’s most trusted contacts where to send help immediately, and the I Am Safe button lets them know a student is okay. With GPS and one-touch calling, it gives students easy access to their closest provider at anytime, anywhere in the U.S. and Canada, including ERs, urgent care facilities, and local police. The app also provides users with COVID updates. Other features, such as the pre-signed medical consent form and student health insurance card, are ready in the event of an emergency.
“Umergency is different from other family safety apps because it doesn’t track users and gives teens a sense of independence and privacy. Both high school and college age young adults are often very private about their personal problems,”
observed Schenbaum. “That’s why the app offers access to critical national crisis hotlines like the National Suicide Lifeline, RAINN (the National Sexual Assault Hotline) and Poison Control,” she explained. “We’ve served over 3500 high schools for over a decade with our teen safe driving program, In One Instant, and now are thrilled to be offering the Umergency app for teens and their families.”
About Umergency – Umergency’s robust suite of health and safety tools enable college and high school students, their families, and trusted contacts, to efficiently navigate through emergencies. Umergency garnered a Media Excellence Award for Best in Health Tech and was named as a Top Favorite App by LA Startups. The company is a proud alum of the prestigious UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator. Umergency allows users to access critical information wherever, whenever it is needed. Umergency is always free-of-charge for students, and a nominal subscription fee for parents and other non- students.
Visit: www.umergencyapp.com