KC-built Attane Health merges with digital grocery pioneer to forge food-is-medicine platform

A merger between a Kansas City startup and a mission-aligned tech platform is expected to connect health plans, retailers, and consumer packaged goods in a hub that transforms food and nutrition care across America, said Emily Brown.

Attane Health on Thursday announced the deal with Chicago-based Sifter Solutions, creating a new level of integrated food-is-medicine service delivery — accelerating healthy food access and measurable health outcomes at an unprecedented scale, the companies said.

“Sifter and Attane have been building toward this together for years — and now we’ve made it official,” said Brown, founder of Attane Health. “We are one company, with one team and one mission: getting the right food to the right people and proving it makes a difference. What has changed is our ability to move faster and go deeper for every organization we serve.”

Emily Brown, Attane Health

Attane Health spent years embedding food-is-medicine programs inside the country’s largest health plans and building deep clinical credibility in health equity. Under Brown’s leadership, Attane established major healthcare contracts across Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and other national accounts while developing real-time outcomes reporting that give health plans the data infrastructure to prove impact at scale.

Her company was named one of Startland News’ Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2023.

Sifter was co-founded by Andrew and Thomas Parkinson, founders of Peapod and pioneers of digital grocery commerce. The company’s configurable technology platform spans curated healthy food access, personalized nutrition education, and SNAP waiver compliance tools deployed with state and retail partners. It leverages efficient low-cost delivery through an extensive existing supply chain of quality low-cost retailers.

The combined business will operate under Sifter Solutions, Inc., which will retain the Attane brand. Brown becomes chief healthcare officer for Sifter.

Together Sifter and Attane can now connect consumers, health plans, retailers, and CPGs through a single end-to-end solution — purpose-built for the convergence of food and healthcare and the need for a turnkey platform, the companies said. 

Andrew Parkinson, Sifter Solutions

The merger offers scale neither business could achieve alone, said Andrew Parkinson, noting a rapidly changing food-is-medicine landscape where regulatory changes, new SNAP waiver compliance requirements, evolving HEDIS quality measures, and rising pressure on health plans to demonstrate measurable outcomes have created both urgency and opportunity.

“This combination was built for the regulatory and market moment we’re in right now,” Parkinson said. “Health plans are being asked to demonstrate measurable outcomes, SNAP compliance deadlines are live, and the cost of chronic disease is unsustainable. The Sifter-Attane platform gives our partners everything they need — in one place, with one team — to move faster and prove impact more clearly than they ever could before.” 

The U.S. food-is-medicine market is projected to approach $30 billion in 2026 and continue rapid growth through 2030 as healthcare providers, payers, and community organizations increasingly integrate nutrition into chronic disease prevention and care. (These estimates reflect only the narrowly defined clinical market, while the broader food-is-medicine ecosystem represents a substantially larger healthcare and wellness opportunity, Sifter said.)

In addition to her role at the newly merged company, Brown serves on the NIAID Advisory Council and founded the Food Equality Initiative. Her 15 years of food-is-medicine and health equity experience are now fully integrated into Sifter’s leadership team.