2026 Digital Health Awards ApplicantCivic Health: Affordability, Access & Health Equity
Caregiving is a civic health issue.
LightWell Care is building an inclusive, multilingual, AI-powered caregiving benefit that helps family caregivers understand health information, prepare for important conversations, stay organized, and connect with benefits and community resources—24/7.
Because caregivers are not just part of the care system. Their health, time, confidence, and well-being matter too.
Explore LightWell Care
The civic health problem
The invisible infrastructure of healthcare
More than 63 million Americans are family caregivers. Every day, they navigate healthcare providers, insurance benefits, aging services, government programs, patient portals, community resources, phone calls, paperwork, and difficult decisions—often without training and during periods of enormous stress.
For families facing language, affordability, health-literacy, disability, geographic, or technology barriers, an already fragmented system becomes even harder to navigate. LightWell Care is designed to help close that gap.
Source: Caregiving in the U.S. 2025, AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving.
What LightWell Care offers
One support layer for the caregiver
Specialized AI Assistants
Help caregivers understand complex information, prepare for appointments, organize responsibilities, draft communications, and identify appropriate next steps. Available 24/7 with support across more than 20 languages.
Explore Caregiver ToolsPrintable Journal
A practical, printable way to keep medications, symptoms, questions, and important information together. Equitable access cannot depend on every caregiver wanting — or being able — to manage everything through an app.
Learn About the Printable JournalCare Community
A place where caregivers share what works, identify what is missing, and help shape what LightWell Care builds next. We do not simply build for caregivers. We build with them.
Join the CommunityThe caregiver is a person—not simply the person doing the work.
Most caregiving solutions help manage one piece of care: an appointment, medication, task list, benefit, or resource. LightWell Care begins from a different premise. Caregiving also includes advocacy, information overload, family communication, uncertainty, emotional strain, and balancing caregiving with work and personal life.
We help caregivers navigate and organize care while recognizing that their own well-being matters too.
Civic health alignment
Making support easier to find, understand, afford, and use
Access
Available around the clock, including during the brief and unpredictable moments when caregivers have time to act.
Affordability
Designed to provide personalized caregiver navigation at a low per-person cost through employers, health plans, healthcare organizations, and community partners.
Health Equity
Built to reduce barriers associated with language, health literacy, disability, technology access, geography, and system complexity.
Community Health
Helps families find and use the clinicians, benefits, programs, and trusted community resources already around them.
Why LightWell Care is different
Not another destination caregivers must navigate.
LightWell Care is being built as the support layer that helps families navigate all the others.
- Caregiver-first and purpose-built
- Multilingual by design
- Available 24/7
- Digital, but not digital-only
- Designed as a broadly accessible benefit
- Built to complement — not replace — human support
LightWell Care complements clinicians, care managers, health plans, FQHCs, employers, and community organizations by helping caregivers find, understand, organize, and use the support already around them.
Early evidence
A clear need—and a disciplined path to measurable impact
900
employed adults included in national LightWell Care research
62%
would definitely or probably use a private AI caregiving assistant
46%
of caregivers providing a substantive estimate anticipated saving at least one hour per week
43%
anticipated reduced caregiver stress
These findings reflect respondents’ expected benefits, not demonstrated product outcomes.
LightWell Care has a working product with early customer use and is progressing from product validation toward institutional pilots. Future pilots are intended to evaluate caregiver navigation confidence, preparedness, time and administrative burden, multilingual usability, connection to benefits and resources, caregiver well-being, and organizational implementation.
Responsible development
Human-centered and safety-focused
LightWell Care is designed as nonclinical caregiver support. Our development process includes defined safety boundaries, structured evaluation, multilingual testing, healthcare-adviser input, and appropriate human escalation. LightWell Care complements clinicians, care managers, family decision-making, and community organizations rather than attempting to replace them.
Organizational value
Supporting caregivers strengthens the systems around them.
Caregivers
Reduce the time and cognitive burden involved in figuring out what to do next.
Employers
Help employees navigate caregiving and use existing benefits more effectively.
Health Plans and Healthcare Organizations
Extend navigation capacity and help families prepare for healthcare interactions.
FQHCs and Community Partners
Help more families find and use trusted support, particularly when they face additional access barriers.
Founder story
Founder story
“I spent 14 years at UnitedHealthcare and Optum. I knew the healthcare system well. And when my own father experienced a crisis, I was still lost.”
LightWell Care grew from founder Kathleen Hustad’s experience navigating a family health crisis—and from a belief that families should not need healthcare expertise, financial privilege, or perfect English to find their way through care.
Learn More About LightWell CareCaregivers help hold healthcare together. It is time to build support around them.
This page was created in support of LightWell Care’s application to the 2026 Digital Health Hub Foundation Digital Health Awards in the Civic Health: Affordability, Access & Health Equity category. Applicant status does not imply selection or endorsement by the Digital Health Hub Foundation.
LightWell Care provides general educational, organizational, and navigation support. It does not diagnose conditions, provide medical treatment, or replace qualified healthcare professionals.