I help healthcare organizations understand why their programs, tools, and content don’t land with the people they’re meant to serve. My practice combines medical sociology, UX research, and program evaluation to identify where systems break down, who gets left out, and what it will take to close the gap.
How I Work
I work diagnostically. Before recommending a solution, I look for what’s structurally driving a problem: a policy constraint, a service design flaw, a gap between what an organization thinks is happening and what its users experience. I ask who’s absent from the data before drawing conclusions from who’s present.
Most engagements include what I’d call structural analysis: identifying the systemic factors that shape who a program reaches, who it misses, and what’s creating the gap between the two. It’s usually where the most useful findings come from.
This approach is a good fit when your team has time to understand a problem before acting on it, and when you’re open to findings that may reshape the original question. If you’re looking for someone to validate a decision that’s already been made, we’re probably not the right fit. If you want someone to tell you what’s going on before you decide what to do next, we might be.
Background
My doctoral research in medical sociology focused on help-seeking and avoidance behaviors in mental health care, examining why people delay or avoid getting help and what shapes those decisions. That work trained me to look past what people say and identify the forces that drive behavior, including the structural ones that constrain it. It’s the foundation for the kind of research I do now.
Before graduate school, I worked as a freelance designer, author, and instructor, grounded in a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. That background shapes how I communicate findings: in clear visual language, in formats teams and communities can put to use, and in close collaboration with the people who produce them.
I spent over three years at a digital health company developing patient education programs for chronic illness management. I began the role during graduate school and continued there for over a year after completing my doctorate. I worked at the intersection of medical evidence, regulatory compliance, and patient experience, building content strategies that met MLR approval and resonated with the people reading them.
Experience Highlights
- Developed patient education programs for cardiometabolic disease management serving health coaching members across multiple therapeutic areas
- Created evidence-based content frameworks that guided production teams across graphic design, copywriting, videography, and animation while maintaining MLR compliance
- Interviewed clinicians, program staff, and organizational leaders to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement
- Built white-label patient programs for international pharmaceutical clients that met both client specifications and regulatory requirements
- Coordinated with medical affairs on peer-reviewed publications and evidence synthesis
- Delivered strategic findings to executive leadership that informed decisions on product direction and organizational change
Credentials
- PhD, Medical Sociology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- MA, Sociology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- BA, Sociology (concentration in Social Psychology), University of Alabama at Birmingham
- BFA, Fine Arts, Savannah College of Art and Design