Kwamane Liddell, JD, MHA, BSN wins
ANA Innovation Award 

Addressing social determinants of health

Through his experience as a nurse, Liddell saw the social determinants of health influence the health outcomes of patients. One of the first problems he tried to solve was enabling patients to access the appropriate nutrition required to help address chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes or HIV.

ThriveLink began as a food company called Nutrible. Nutrible had a web app that made it easy for clinics and community organizations to order medically tailored meals and groceries to be delivered directly to patients at home from community-based stores and restaurants.

Liddell and his team soon discovered that many patients also needed help to access a wide variety of programs related to social determinants of health – like housing, basic amenities, food insecurity and affordable health services.

They compiled information about available programs, but when they printed it out and gave it to patients, they found that many couldn’t read the information or complete the paperwork. For people with low literacy (more than half of adults in the U.S.)¹ or impaired vision, reading is a barrier to applying for programs that can help them. Lack of access to technology can be another barrier to filling out forms.

Changing its name to ThriveLink to reflect its growing purpose, the company created a voice-activated AI enrollment tool. The software empowers patients and families to sign up for more than 50,000 assistance programs nationwide by verbally answering simple application questions via telephone.

On nurse innovation and possibilities

On the subject of nurse innovation, Liddell advises that “The first step is to deeply understand the problem and how other people are solving it.” Then, think big but start small, and look for people who have experience with the problem or are trying to create a solution so you can learn.

“The most important part about most technology in healthcare is the operational piece,” Liddell said. “On the front end, it’s thinking about how to get the technology to nurses so that they can engage patients with it, without causing more work for nurses.”

He’s found that the path one person sees to solving a problem might be different from how someone else would solve it from a different or broader perspective. “Talk to the people who are trying to solve the problem and the people who are experiencing the problem,” he said.

In the case of ThriveLink, this is how they went from solving medically tailored meal access, to solving a range of social determinants of health in a way that is simplistic for users. Because his team asked so many questions and talked to so many people, they were able to recognize the bigger problems related to health equity they are now able to address.

To Kwamane Liddell, one of the most powerful aspects of being a nurse is knowing you can help the world in the way you want to. He’s excited about the possibilities for helping to solve issues surrounding health equity. “I think we have a tool that can expand beyond our imagination so we can connect with more community organizations, health systems, health insurance plans and governments.”

Visit our new nurse innovation page to learn more about Stryker’s sponsorship of the ANA Innovation Awards.