On April 26, United Spinal Association announced the acquisition of AbleThrive to ensure people with spinal cord injuries and disabilities have greater access to quality information, resources and support.

Since its founding in 2014, AbleThrive’s mission has been to connect people with SCI/D and their families to disability-specific support resources that were readily accessible online, but difficult to find and navigate.

In the coming months, United Spinal and AbleThrive will combine their life-enhancing resources, information and technology onto United Spinal’s website, creating an extensive online support network for wheelchair users and other individuals with mobility disabilities. This will further enhance outreach to United Spinal’s growing membership community that includes individuals with SCI/D, their family members, friends and healthcare providers.

“As we emerge from this pandemic, it’s vital that people living with SCI/D get the very best support to pursue greater independence. Bringing AbleThrive’s resources under United Spinal will allow us to help more people manage the complications of living with disability,” says Abby Ross, United Spinal’s chief operating officer.

Since its launch, AbleThrive has sourced articles and videos from its partner network of more than 250 organizations, bloggers, hospitals and companies and organized over 1,500 articles on its website by category and level of mobility.

“We saw great potential in curating and organizing relevant content on our website so that people didn’t have to spend hours scouring the internet on their own,” said Brittany Déjean, founder and CEO of AbleThrive. “I’m proud of what we have achieved over the last seven years with the support of our team and community, and as AbleThrive becomes a part of United Spinal’s robust resources and services, I’m excited to see how everything we built can have an even greater impact.”

AbleThrive has been shared as a tool in 15 spinal cord injury rehab centers in four countries and was featured in the 2017 AT&T documentary Resolution: Innovative Thinking About Disability and in Forbes and on NPR.

It was also selected as a part of the prestigious Echoing Green Fellowship and Global Good Fund Fellowship and received a community service award at the South by Southwest Conference.