Boston, MA – The Kraft Center for Community Health at Mass General Brigham has officially announced the recipient of the very first Kraft Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Community Health. This prestigious $100,000 award has been granted to ThriveLink, a St. Louis-based organization pioneering the use of telephonic artificial intelligence to streamline the enrollment process for essential safety-net programs. ThriveLink’s innovative platform empowers families to complete and submit applications for critical support such as health insurance, food assistance, and utility help—all through simple voice interaction—eliminating typical barriers in access and navigation of these benefits.
The Kraft Prize, which drew nearly 150 submissions nationwide, was designed to recognize transformative and innovative efforts that directly impact health outcomes within communities. By leveraging AI-driven voice technologies, ThriveLink transcends traditional digital and manual application hurdles, ensuring that vulnerable families who often remain invisible to the health and social service systems receive timely aid. This approach marks a significant technical advancement in mitigating social determinants of health, which are widely acknowledged as key drivers of health inequities and poor clinical outcomes.
Alongside ThriveLink’s triumph, two other organizations were honored as finalists, each receiving $10,000 to augment their social health impact initiatives. Mae, a digital health platform dedicated to enhanced maternal health outcomes, offers scalable and culturally informed doula support and educational resources. Its comprehensive integration with health plans and community doulas underscores a data-driven commitment to closing persistent gaps in prenatal and perinatal care access, crucial for reducing maternal morbidity and mortality. The other finalist, Sober Sidekick, is a peer-led addiction recovery app that has amassed over one million unique installs, achieving impressive results with a reported 48% reduction in relapse rates and substantial cost savings in healthcare expenditure per member. This application utilizes real-time community connection technology, emphasizing the collective journey of recovery and addressing substance use disorder as a chronic, socially influenced condition.
Anne Klibanski, MD, President and CEO of Mass General Brigham, emphasized the mission-driven nature of the Kraft Center, stating that improving community health remains a central pillar of advancing healthcare equity. The Kraft Prize is a vital component of this strategy, spotlighting companies like ThriveLink that employ emerging technologies to expand accessibility and quality of care. With the integration of sophisticated AI systems in under-resourced settings, these innovations illustrate how cutting-edge computational methods can be applied to solve deeply entrenched public health challenges.
Elsie Taveras, Chief Community Health and Health Equity Officer and executive leadership of the Kraft Center, acknowledged the exceptional quality and impact potential of the inaugural applicants. Their selection highlights the increasing trend toward leveraging digital health solutions and peer support mechanisms to tackle prevalent issues such as substance use, maternal health disparities, and social risk mitigation. Their recognition by the Kraft Center serves as validation of the multidisciplinary collaborations necessary for addressing complex community health needs.
Robert Kraft, Chairman and CEO of the Kraft Group and namesake of the Center and Prize, noted the importance of technological innovation as a catalyst for systemic change within community health ecosystems. He expressed hope that the resources and recognition accompanying the Prize would serve as accelerants, enabling organizations like ThriveLink and others to expand their reach and deepen their impact across varied populations facing health inequities.
In addition to the monetary award, ThriveLink’s Founder and CEO, Kwamane Liddell, will participate in two critical panel discussions on community health innovation at the upcoming Mass General Brigham World Medical Innovation Forum (WMIF) in Boston. This global forum convenes thousands of experts to foster cross-sector collaboration and push forward transformational solutions in medicine and public health. Representation from finalists Mae and Sober Sidekick at the same event further underscores the national significance of their work and the increasing prioritization of integrating social care into medical systems.
The Kraft Center is further supporting ThriveLink by facilitating access to the Mass General Brigham Innovation MESH Network, a comprehensive ecosystem connecting innovators, researchers, and healthcare leaders. Through the MESHCore infrastructure, ThriveLink gains opportunities for development partnerships, resource sharing, and pilot programs that could prove pivotal in scaling their AI-powered enrollment solution and enhancing its technical robustness and user engagement features.
Kwamane Liddell spoke candidly about the social implications of ThriveLink’s success, highlighting that many families served through their platform experience profound invisibility within traditional health and social service frameworks. By developing a system that listens and responds to families’ spoken needs, ThriveLink epitomizes human-centered design augmented by AI, effectively bridging gaps created by language, literacy, and digital divide barriers.
The Kraft Prize’s thematic focus prioritizes five critical areas: cardiometabolic disease, substance use disorder, cancer, maternal health, and social risk mitigation. Applicants were evaluated based on measurable impacts within these domains, with an explicit requirement for community engagement in both innovation development and implementation. This criterion reflects a growing consensus in public health: sustainable solutions must be co-created with the populations they aim to serve.
Maya Hardigan, Founder and CEO of Mae, underscored their dedication to enhancing maternal health equity. She stressed the importance of integrating community-based doulas with health insurance programs to improve birth outcomes on a systemic scale. Technology here serves not merely as a delivery tool but as a strategic enabler of care continuity and health literacy, reducing preventable complications in a population often underserved due to socioeconomic barriers.
Chris Thompson, Founder and CEO of Sober Sidekick, detailed the app’s unprecedented scale and clinical impact. The platform’s community-centric design leverages real-time peer support to combat relapse, shifting substance use treatment models away from isolated interventions toward continuous, connected care networks. Their evidence of reduced relapse frequency and cost savings presents a compelling case for broader adoption of such peer-driven digital therapeutics in addiction medicine.
Together, these organizations exemplify the frontier of community health innovation, combining artificial intelligence, digital health platforms, and peer-led support with rigorous community engagement and measurable health outcomes. The Kraft Prize’s inaugural recipients herald a new era where technology is deeply intertwined with equity-focused healthcare solutions, providing replicable models and inspiring broader systemic change.
For more details on the 2025 Kraft Prize winners and finalists, visit massgeneralbrigham.org/kraftprize.
Subject of Research: Community health innovation leveraging artificial intelligence, digital health platforms, and peer support to address social determinants of health and improve health equity.
Article Title: ThriveLink Wins Inaugural Kraft Prize for AI-Driven Community Health Innovation Advancing Health Equity Nationwide
News Publication Date: Not specified (announcement in 2025)
Web References:
- Kraft Center for Community Health: https://www.kraftcommunityhealth.org/
- Mass General Brigham Kraft Prize: https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/about/advancing-care/health-equity-community-health/kraft-prize
- ThriveLink: https://www.mythrivelink.com/
- Mae: https://www.meetmae.com/
- Sober Sidekick: https://www.sobersidekick.com/
- Mass General Brigham World Medical Innovation Forum: https://worldmedicalinnovation.org/
- Innovation MESH Network: https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/research-and-innovation/innovation/for-innovators/mesh
Keywords: health equity, community health, artificial intelligence, digital health innovation, maternal health, substance use disorder, social determinants of health, peer support, health insurance enrollment, telephonic AI
