When Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health and Thrive Global, the behavior change technology company founded and led by Arianna Huffington, announced their collaboration in October, they set out to help people make healthier decisions about sleep, food, movement, stress and connection through what Ms. Huffington called “microsteps.”.
For Ms. Huffington, supporting people through microsteps between doctor visits is an important part of moving healthcare beyond treating illness.
“One of our mottos is that health is also what happens between doctor visits. If we don’t nail how we can help people sleep better, eat better, move more, stress less and connect more, it’s going to be very hard to transform what is really a sick care system into a healthcare system,” she told Becker’s in an interview alongside Pete McCanna, CEO of Baylor Scott & White.
Mr. McCanna said the idea resonated with him when he heard Ms. Huffington describe Thrive Global’s approach at a dinner, because it fit with the system’s effort to redefine what a modern health system should be, one he described as customer-centric and demand-driven.
“When we say customer, it’s an elevated status. You’re always a customer and sometimes a patient, and that causes us to expand our reach into the many other journeys people have,” he said.
Those journeys, as Mr. McCanna described them, include a daily wellness journey at every stage of life, the ongoing management of chronic conditions that three-quarters of Americans live with, the time before and after a hospital or physician visit that is largely left to the individual, and the end of life. He said Thrive Global’s model fills much of that space, and that its grounding in research was an important factor in his interest.
“It’s fundamentally science-backed. This isn’t soft stuff. It’s just stuff most health systems haven’t focused on,” Mr. McCanna said.
The collaboration is already underway through MyBSWHealth, the system’s digital platform, which Mr. McCanna described as its complete customer interface for information, prompts, services, payments and other administrative tasks. Some of Thrive Global’s library of videos, articles and Microsteps, the company’s term for small, science-backed daily actions, is already available in the app and will expand, he said. The next step is to offer that content on a personalized basis.
“If you have diabetes, we’re going to offer you Thrive Global’s recipe library, and articles or videos that are very specific to managing your chronic condition,” Mr. McCanna said.
From there, the organizations plan to explore and co-develop additional features that draw on both organizations’ respective expertise. Mr. McCanna said he expects some of that functionality to be integrated into the app within the next six to 12 months, although the timeline will depend on how the organizations design the experience to encourage customer engagement. Thrive Global’s product is already mature and used by many customers outside of health systems, he said. Baylor Scott & White is its first health system partner, according to Ms. Huffington, who said the organizations are planning a co-design session in New York.
Ms. Huffington said Thrive Global’s methodology, developed over 10 years, centers on helping people turn healthy intentions into lasting habits through small, incremental steps, such as 60-second resets designed to interrupt the stress cycle, in place of the kind of sweeping resolutions people tend to abandon within weeks. The company also aims to make the experience enjoyable, she said, pointing to a free cookbook of affordable recipes with five ingredients or fewer donated by well-known chefs.
“Food is medicine, but it’s also ritual. It’s about love and family, so you can’t make it punitive,” Ms. Huffington said.
The collaboration builds on digital work Baylor Scott & White has been scaling for several years. Since fiscal 2024, preventive care tools offered through MyBSWHealth have driven nearly 318,000 completed appointments, such as mammograms and colonoscopies, which uncovered more than 93,000 new conditions, according to the system. In fiscal 2026, its virtual care volume grew 20% to more than 570,000 encounters, or 7.55% of all encounters. Meanwhile, proxy relationships, which let customers give a family member or caregiver access to help manage their care, grew 20.6%.
To judge whether the Thrive Global work is succeeding, Mr. McCanna said the system will look first at how many customers engage with the tools and the depth of that engagement. Baylor Scott & White will then look at outcomes, using its clinical research capability to track qualitative and quantitative effects on health span and health outcomes across the large and diverse population it serves. Ms. Huffington said the organizations also plan to gather stories from customers and patients about what resonated and what did not, so they can keep refining the approach.
“As well as being data-obsessed, we want to be story-obsessed,” she said.
For other health system leaders weighing a similar shift, Mr. McCanna said the opportunity lies in partnering with companies that have already shown they can improve health in settings where health systems have not traditionally operated.
“My encouragement is for health systems to expand their aperture and look for partnerships with companies like Thrive Global that can augment their great skills in acute care with expertise outside of acute care,” he said.
He added that he believes the approach can lead to a more proactive model of care in the U.S., one that delivers more services further upstream and lowers lifetime costs while improving health, though he acknowledged the industry has work to do to get there.
“I just think culturally and structurally, the health system in the United States has a hill to climb here, and this is one important step we’re taking with Thrive Global to really change that model,” Mr. McCanna said.
Becker’s 3rd Annual Fall Chief Pharmacy Officer Summit is the top tier event that the people leading the future of pharmacy convene. This 3-day event is built specifically for Chief Pharmacy Officers and senior pharmacy leaders. The sessions examine the workforce, financial and clinical priorities shaping pharmacy today. Becker’s is where candid discussions flourish and new ideas thrive. Becker's 3rd Annual Fall Chief Pharmacy Officer Summit
