Medibank and Smiling Mind partner to bring mindfulness to more families

Two of Australia’s leading health organisations have joined forces to support the mental wellbeing of young Australians.

Smiling Mind – a not-for-profit committed to improving the mental health of young Australians through the practice of mindful meditation – has partnered with Medibank, one of Australia’s leading private health insurers, to help with their goal of reaching five million young people by 2021.

The new partnership, supporting Medibank’s Live Better program, will focus on enabling families to utilise mindfulness tools together to promote mental wellbeing. The new content will empower families to incorporate regular mindfulness practice at home, providing new tools and resources through the Smiling Mind app and digital platforms.

Smiling Mind Chief Operating Officer Sarah La Roche said the not-for-profit is excited to be joining forces with Medibank to help build healthy young minds and support families.

“Australia is currently experiencing unprecedented levels of youth mental illness, contributing to record levels of violence, bullying and even youth suicide statistics. Our focus is on enabling young people to develop key skills needed to help reduce these statistics, through formal and informal mindfulness practice,” said Ms La Roche.

“From our Smiling Mind community of over four million app and school program users, we know that parents are struggling to find easily accessible tools and resources to help them empower their children to be mentally healthy. We’re confident that this partnership with Medibank will help us support more families Australia-wide, as parents look to build mentally healthy homes.”

Medibank Chief Customer Officer David Koczkar said Medibank is proud to welcome Smiling Mind to the Live Better program.

Smiling Mind is our partner of choice because their programs focus on equipping all Australians with the skills they need to build healthy minds. They provide a truly unique proposition with an inclusive tone that clearly connects with so many people. Through this partnership, we hope to accelerate our goal of getting 1.5 million Aussies active in the mind and body by 2021

“Smiling Mind will become a key partner for our Live Better program which supports the health and wellbeing of all Australians under the pillars ‘eat’ ‘move’ and ‘feel’. Smiling Mind will be integrated into our new Live Better rewards app in the coming months, which allows users to track a broad range of healthy actions, with eligible Medibank customers able to earn and redeem rewards,” said Mr Koczkar.

Aligned with Smiling Mind’s national award-winning schools’ program, the Medibank partnership activity will focus on impactful content shared through Smiling Mind’s app as well as other digital platforms.

The partnership program will also include a new families program called ‘mindfully together’, featuring meditation programs designed to be listened to by the whole family. The program will include extensive research to determine the next phase of tools and resources deemed to be the most useful to parents and families in the future.