Mass General Brigham’s Kraft Center Announces Winner and Finalists of the 2025 Kraft Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Community Health
Boston, MA, Sept. 11, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 
- Inaugural $100k award goes to St. Louis company making a transformative impact in its community
- Organizations supporting maternal health and substance use disorder recognized as finalists
Boston, MA – Today, the Kraft Center for Community Health at Mass General Brigham announced that the winner of the inaugural Kraft Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Community Health is ThriveLink, a telephonic AI enrollment solution that empowers families to verbally complete and submit applications for safety-net programs like health insurance, food stamps and utility assistance. The St. Louis-based organization was selected for the $100,000 national prize from nearly 150 applications submitted from across the country, all of which were dedicated to the idea of making a transformative or innovative impact on health outcomes in their communities.
In addition to ThriveLink being selected as the winner of the Kraft Prize, two organizations were selected as finalists: Mae, a digital health platform working to improve maternal health outcomes and Sober Sidekick, a peer-led application that aims to decrease the rate of relapses among individuals seeking treatment for substance use. Each group receives $10,000 to further their efforts.
“Improving the health of our communities is at the very heart of Mass General Brigham’s mission,” said Anne Klibanski, MD, president and CEO at Mass General Brigham. “Through the Kraft Center and this Kraft Prize, we are proud to support the innovative work that is being done by companies like ThriveLink to make high-quality care more accessible and effective for all.”
“The Kraft Prize is an opportunity for us to spotlight other innovators that are working creatively and effectively to tackle some of the most pressing issues impacting community health,” said Elsie Taveras, Chief Community Health and Health Equity Officer at Mass General Brigham and Executive Director of the Kraft Center for Community Health. “In this first year, we had an incredibly impressive group of applicants from across the country. Our selections of ThriveLink, Mae and Sober Sidekick show just how impactful these organizations are and can be. It is our honor to recognize their efforts.”
“These companies and their leaders are setting the example for how innovation and technology can be leveraged to make transformative changes in community health,” said Robert Kraft, chairman and CEO of the Kraft Group. “We hope that the Prize can further help motivate them and enhance the outstanding work they are doing for individuals and families across the country.”
In addition to the $100,000 winning prize, ThriveLink will have an opportunity for its Founder and CEO, Kwamane Liddell, to present on two panels focused on community health and innovation at the Mass General Brigham World Medical Innovation Forum (WMIF) taking place in Boston on September 15-16. The WMIF brings together more than 2,000 global leaders from across industries to collaborate on transformative health solutions. Mae and Sober Sidekick will also have representation on a panel at the WMIF.
The Kraft Center for Community Health will also provide tailored and unique support to ThriveLink team members, including access to Mass General Brigham’s extensive Innovation MESH Network and MESH Core, linking them to other innovators, collaborators, and resources to enhance and further their important work.
“It’s an incredible honor and blessing to receive the inaugural Kraft Prize,” said Kwamane Liddell, founder and CEO of ThriveLink. “Every day, we serve families who often feel unseen — families we may pass in the grocery store or encounter in our health systems without realizing they are struggling with food and other basic needs. ThriveLink winning this award is a powerful reminder to those families that we see you.”
Launched in February 2025, the Kraft Prize is centered on five priority areas: cardiometabolic disease, substance use disorder, cancer, maternal health and social risk mitigation. Applicants needed to demonstrate a clear and measurable impact on community health in at least one of these priority areas and show community engagement in the development and implementation of their company, program or innovation.
"Mae is honored to be a finalist for the Kraft Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Community Health in recognition of our work to make maternal health more accessible and equitable,” said Maya Hardigan, founder and CEO of Mae. “We are deeply committed to expanding access to high-impact doula support and other critical resources, in partnership with health plans and community-based doulas, to drive better outcomes and support healthier births."
“Sober Sidekick has surpassed 1 million unique installs, scaling the greatest wave of comeback stories the world has ever seen,” said Chris Thompson, founder and CEO of Sober Sidekick. “That growth and its impact is what the Kraft Prize recognition affirms: we’re pioneering a new model for addiction care that puts community connection at its center. Traditional healthcare often treats addiction as an individual problem, but our platform proves that recovery is a collective journey. With peer support available 24/7 and where people can connect within seconds at their most vulnerable moments, we see measurable outcomes: a 48% reduction in relapse rates and thousands of dollars in healthcare savings per member.”
To learn more about the winner and finalists of the 2025 Kraft Prize, visit massgeneralbrigham.org/kraftprize.
About the Kraft Center for Community Health
The Kraft Center for Community Health at Mass General Brigham was established with the mission to expand access to high-quality, cost-effective healthcare for medically underserved patients and communities. Founded in 2011 through a generous donation by Robert Kraft, the Center aims to catalyze innovative solutions to real world community health problems, execute solutions locally, and make them scalable and ready to spread nationally to improve health outcomes for disadvantaged populations nationally. The Kraft Center is an innovation leader across the Mass General Brigham system, specializing in programmatic design and implementation to improve community health. For more information, please visit kraftcommunityhealth.org.
About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org
McKenzie Ridings Mass General Brigham 617-224-8999 mridings@mgb.org
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