Better outcomes, better behavior.

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Editorial Publications, Writing, and Interviews

The Financial Times - Letter to the Editor: Behavioural science suffers its own confirmation bias

This Is Not How I Thought It Would Be - Sarah Watters, PhD

Morning Brew – Healthcare Brew Making Rounds Interview Series: Wellth’s Sarah Watters on how incentives can shape patient behavior

PharmaPhorum Podcast – Creating behavioural change through incremental, small steps

Action Design Radio – Behavioral Snowballs with Sarah Watters

The Decision Lab – Your Phone is the Future of Healthcare: Interview with a Behavioral Scientist

Behavioural Public Policy Blog – Why a calorie count won’t spoil a good feast

Pacific Standard Magazine - Five Studies: The Importance — and Difficulty — of Talking AboutAdvanced-Care Planning

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A sprinkling of social proof…

Engaging Chronically Disengaged Patients

Patients with multiple chronic conditions were ignoring all traditional outreach attempts.
- Digital health company serving patients with multiple chronic conditions in Medicare, Medicaid, and DSNP populations
- Target population chronically unresponsive to traditional health plan outreach
- Low engagement with PCPs and self-care behaviors despite high clinical risk and incurred (or potential for) high cost utilization
Built a behavioral playbook that addressed capability and sustained behavior change, not just motivation.
- Developed evidence-based behavioral playbook grounded in self-efficacy and habit research
- Designed daily intervention touchpoints combining reminders with capability-building exercises
- Created a novel patient-centric approach based on behavioral science that addressed behavioral barriers, not just motivation
- Worked alongside product, dev, design, and QA teams to implement features aligned with behavioral framework
Medication adherence increased 18% and hospital admissions dropped 35% within one year.
- 18% increase in medication adherence
- 35% reduction in hospital admissions
- Results achieved within 12 months
- Methodology now core to company's product strategy

Patients with multiple chronic conditions were ignoring all traditional outreach attempts. So I developed a strategy and built a behavioral playbook that addressed capability and sustained behavior change, not just motivation.

Medication adherence increased 18% and hospital admissions dropped 35% within one year.

Behavioral Economics in Healthcare Incentives

Financial incentive programs were producing initial spikes in engagement but failing to sustain behavior change.
- Healthcare clients often see suboptimal engagement in their rewards and financial incentive programs
- Alternatively, initial engagement spikes followed by rapid drop-off
- Traditional incentive structures failing to produce sustained behavior change among chronic disease and rising-risk populations
Applied behavioral economics principles to design incentives that work with human psychology, not against it.
- Applied behavioral economics principles: loss aversion, hyperbolic discounting, random variable effects, and hedonic rewards
- Designed incentive timing and structure based on habit formation research across populations with different needs and care plans
- Created segmented communication approaches recognizing different behavioral profiles
- Built measurement framework to track behavior change vs. program adherence
Achieved sustained behavior change beyond short-term compliance, with significantly improved cost-effectiveness.
- Sustained behavior change with low to no financial rewards over time
- Incentive schemes now grounded in evidence rather than intuition
- Replicable framework deployed across multiple client populations
- Cost-per-behavior-change significantly improved vs. previous approaches

Financial incentive programs were producing initial spikes in engagement but failing to sustain behavior change. I applied behavioral economics principles to design incentives that work with human psychology, not against it.

We achieved sustained behavior change beyond short-term compliance, with significantly improved cost-effectiveness as a result of low to no financial rewards over time

AI-Powered Research Operations

An early-stage healthcare company was spending too much time gathering research instead of building product.
- Early-stage healthcare company struggling to monitor rapidly evolving regulatory and industry landscape
- Team spending excessive time on research synthesis and hypothesizing instead of product development
- Risk of missing critical competitive or regulatory developments
Designed an AI agent system that automates research monitoring while maintaining PhD-level rigor.
- Designed AI agent system for automated research monitoring and synthesis
- Built methodological safeguards to maintain research rigor and avoid algorithmic blind spots
- Created filtering and prioritization framework tailored to company's strategic needs
- Implemented automated messaging to drop relevant news briefs into email / Slack in real-time to circumvent manual searching
Research now runs continuously and automatically, freeing the team to focus on strategy and product decisions.
- Research monitoring now fully automated and continuous
- Product team redirected from information gathering to strategic decision-making
- Critical developments are no longer missed or take time to find and validate
- System serves as scalable research infrastructure as company grows

An early-stage healthcare company was spending too much time gathering research instead of building product. I designed an AI agent system that automates research monitoring while maintaining PhD-level rigor.

Research now runs continuously and automatically, freeing the team to focus on strategy and product decisions.

Logistics Digital Transformation

A global logistics company needed warehouse workers to actually adopt new technology—not just tolerate it.
- Multinational logistics company undertaking complete warehouse management system overhaul
- Needed technology adoption across diverse workforce in high-pressure environment
- Previous digital initiatives had struggled with user adoption and workflow disruption
Used ethnographic research to design around how workers actually operate, not how process maps assume they do.
- Led ethnographic research to understand actual warehouse worker behaviors and cognitive patterns
- Conducted business analysis to align product specifications with real-world operations
- Designed user experience accounting for cognitive load, workflow interruption, and frontline constraints
- Developed implementation strategy prioritizing human factors alongside technical requirements
Efficiency increased 20%, achieved best-ever productivity, and 96% of volume now runs through the system.
- 20% increase in warehouse efficiency
- Best-ever labor productivity metrics for the organization
- 96% of volume now processed through automated technology

A global logistics company needed warehouse workers to actually adopt new technology—not just tolerate it. I used ethnographic research to design around how workers actually operate, not how process maps assume they do.

Efficiency increased 20%, we achieved best-ever productivity, and 96% of volume now runs through the system.