A path to pilot within a federal health system

Case study Context:

• Creating a pathway for federally-funded suicide-prevention innovations to pilot within the largest integrated healthcare system in the U.S.

Challenge:

• One of the first pathways for moving private startup and community-based suicide prevention innovations into real-world pilots within VA.

• High volume of rolling applications requires clear organization and interpretation for thoughtful decision-making.

• Resources must support awardees with varying levels of product maturity and familiarity with the system.

• Federal stakeholders have limited time and capacity to engage with and adopt pilots.

MY ROLE:

• I worked across innovators, federal stakeholders, and internal teams to bring structure to an emerging pathway from external innovation to pilot.

• I excelled at clarifying what different groups needed — often under resource constraints — and rapidly translating insights into programming, product design, and workflows that made it easier to engage, evaluate, and move forward.

What I did:

• For innovators

• Surfaced common blockers and themes across cohorts with varying levels of product maturity

• Connected innovators to stakeholders by designing an engaging, low-effort, scalable “ask-me-anything” virtual series with federal employees

• Built feedback and information sourcing into event design and outreach strategy

• Synthesized insights from interviews, coaching sessions, and feedback into evergreen tools to support future and current innovators

• Positioned innovators to engage meaningfully with potential pilot champions
  

• For federal stakeholders

• Designed sessions and interactions that made participation more efficient and valuable for stakeholders with limited time

• Created conditions for stakeholders to engage meaningfully with potential pilots, helping them champion and provide feedback on what they would need

• Simplified application, onboarding, and data processes to make it easier for stakeholders to evaluate, engage with, and move forward with potential pilots
  

• Across the process

• Identified gaps in how information was captured and structured across applications, onboarding, and reporting

• Redesigned templates and data collection processes to better reflect what stakeholders needed to evaluate and act on

• Designed a centralized dashboard to surface key insights, enabling clearer and more efficient decision-making

Outcomes:

• Increased stakeholder and innovator engagement despite limited time and competing priorities

• Surfaced insights across a diverse innovation portfolio, improving visibility into shared needs and themes

• Reduced manual, high-touch processes, enabling stakeholders with limited capacity to focus on identifying and supporting the most promising innovations

• Created evergreen resources for incoming suicide prevention innovators external to VA, including interviews and tips around pitching and storytelling to potential champions, Veteran-centered design, and meaningful data collection

Reflections:

This work made clear how important it is to ask the right questions, nail the correct intent, and identify patterns across stakeholder groups — especially in high-stakes environments like suicide prevention. While needs were often expressed differently, there were consistent patterns underneath.

The solutions were often simpler than expected. Focusing on what people actually needed — and what motivated them — made it possible to design programming, resources, and processes that unblocked points of friction, kept key players engaged, and helped thoughtful decision-making even within tight capacity constraints.