How might we reduce the stigma associated mental health, which underpins global health and trauma recovery?
How might we use technology to personalize services to support people, whether they are veterans, foster-care kids, returning citizens, or an elder living alone?
These are two of the questions that I recently discussed with Paul Dommel, IBM’s Global Director for Public Service and Civilian Government, whose portfolio intersects with health and human services all over the world. The pandemic and other traumatic events have driven them to dig even deeper into how to support vulnerable populations.
In a pilot program with the Veterans Administration (VA), IBM explored what is most likely to trigger stress among veterans transitioning to civilian life, a population that is, unfortunately, more likely to be living with post-traumatic stress disorder. Their research found that veterans were more likely to be successful if they felt more confident about finding a job. IBM focused their efforts on creating an app that, for example, uses someone’s military occupation code, location, and other job experience to scour a job database and return personalized results and a daily to-do list. In the pilot alone, 14% of veterans found jobs through the app. Others used an “anytime, anywhere” link to the VA crisis hotline to get help.
Dommel pointed out that the lessons learned in the VA program parallel the work that IBM is doing to help Sonoma County create a 360-degree, personalized safety net for vulnerable residents. Parole, unemployment, housing, and mental health services all intersect around a single person, sometimes in a confusing and uncoordinated way. As Dommel said, “We put our most vulnerable people in a position where they have to figure everything out and it’s not feasible. It’s not possible.” IBM is helping the county government knit together what they know about their residents and the programs that can support them, creating a data-driven platform that is already seeing results.
Another aspect of IBM’s work with veterans was particularly intriguing to me: a peer-to-peer network to support emotional well-being. Veterans opt-in to a monitoring system on their phone that tracks usage. Then they name the people who will be contacted if their usage patterns start to indicate distress or depression. The system sends an alert to that friend or loved one, asking them to check in on the veteran, again creating a personalized safety net for an individual, powered by technology.
Just as the lessons learned tracking cargo shipping containers were deployed to track vaccine, IBM is taking lessons learned from one vulnerable population to create services for another. And they are not only creating those services for clients, but on a volunteer basis, as well.
After an explosion rocked the port of Beirut, a group of IBMers saw an opportunity to quickly build a resource for people to offer – and find – help. They launched the Lebanon Relief Network, connecting people on the ground and those who are part of the Lebanese diaspora to professionals, to volunteers, and to each other. This volunteer, open source initiative is another example of how IBM is finding ways to use technology to serve people.
Learn more about how IBM is using technology and data to improve access to mental health resources. And please let me know if this post sparks questions or ideas for you. Comments are open.
Image: Safety net, by Infinite Ache on Flickr.
Thank you for this. What a powerful array of brilliant person-centered programs Susannah – especially heartened to see the personalized peer-to-peer safety net and the “anytime, anywhere” crisis help access portal.
I can’t help but contrast such thoughtful whole-health care planning for vulnerable people in need, to the unceremonious and disconnected way in which my son with complex congenital heart disease was transitioned from one particular children’s health system to adult medicine nearly 10 years ago: the way he was dropped out of pediatric care and expected to start over and find his way at age 18 when he went to college in a different state, with his long diagnosis, weighty medical problem list and 10-15 specialists, was akin to the old days of dumping a “problem patient” without insurance at a different hospital ER.
The problems his cardiac team railed against (polypharmacy; poorly coordinated specialty care) and in some cases caused (heart failure after medical error when he was 15 years old) were neither addressed or resolved, still sometimes wreaking havoc with his life even as he approaches his 28th birthday.
I poured my heart out in three more paragraphs but decided not to burden others with my trauma, lest I sound exactly like the burned-out patient / family advocate I once avoided. (I’m most grateful to have access to and means for excellent mental health care.)
Despite my negative experiences, I see so many possibilities to use the thinking and perspective of what you wrote about here, to make it different for others. While I am no longer an active participant working to transform broken healthcare – only for me and mine – I so appreciate the richness of your vantage point and the importance and value of the work you do, helping spark hope for a brighter future. Thank you.
Thank you, Tami, for sharing your experience and your voice.
There are so many ways that we can work to serve people better, handing them off from pediatric to adult care (as in the case of your son) or from active-duty military to civilian life or all the transitions that happen in foster care. We need to create “no wrong door” systems for our vulnerable populations at every level of government and health care.
Since you mentioned trauma, I’d be curious to see what you think of the Lebanon Relief Network site. I clicked through the questions and found it useful for thinking about my own life, far from the port of Beirut but close to the flames of other trauma.
I love the work that bloomed from IBM’s key insight about what returning vets needed AND the juxtaposition to applications for other vulnerable populations. Examples of learning from one industry or project applications for other industries or projects are my favorite kinds of content! Something I can always rely on you to provide, Susannah.
Thanks, Mary!
Great post Susannah! I appreciate the support that IBM provided the VA in their pilot. My own work supporting the VA has focused on some of these very issues as we create a journey map to assist veterans in returning to civilian life, as well as often helping to overcome traumatic stress issues. One of the biggest problems that I see a great need in addressing is the continuing increase in veteran suicide.
Thank you for highlighting this important topic and showing the linkages to how we might approach other challenges.
Thanks, Brian! A compliment from you means a lot, my friend. There is so much opportunity for good if we can harness the power of tech with humanity at the center.