Swift Outpatient Alternatives for Rapid Stabilization (SOARS)

My Role

Design Researcher

As a Design Researcher, I assisted the SOARS team in identifying ways to maximize the acceptability and usability of the SOARS referral and intervention pathway from the perspective of outpatient medical providers. I created and co-facilitated 3 workshops to engage 11 outpatient medical providers. These sessions resulted in a streamlined referral workflow and an improved discharge message upon completion of treatment.

Timeline of Involvement

December 2024 – March 2025

Design Phase(s) of Involvement

Design/Build

Overview

Two key problems interfere with timely suicide-specific care that can prevent emergency department (ED) and hospital admissions, maintain youth’s stability, and promote suicide risk reduction:

  1. Limited access to timely interventions to reduce suicide risk during a suicidal crisis

  2. Discontinuity in the suicide care pathway

This project’s objective is to improve outpatient management of youth suicide risk by examining 4 intervention components to build an optimized intervention package that is responsive to the needs of, and coordinated with, providers in primary care settings.

Goals

SOARS has four main goals. My involvement as a design researcher focused on the fourth goal.

  1. Find the most efficient, scalable, and effective SOARS intervention package.

  2. Test if age and suicidal thoughts & behavior (STB) history moderate intervention components’ impact.

  3. Evaluate if SOARS components impact youth STBs through their assumed mechanisms of change.

  4. Identify ways to maximize the acceptability and usability of the SOARS referral and intervention pathway from the perspective of outpatient medical providers.

Research Team

  • Molly Adrian, PhD: Principal Investigator

  • Elizabeth McCauley, PhD: Co-Investigator

  • Kalina Babeva, PhD: Co-Investigator

  • Eileen Twohy, PhD: Co-Investigator

  • Nancy Namkung, MSW, LICSW: Project Manager

  • Tova Levine, BA: Research Coordinator

Methods

© University of Washington Suicide Care Research Center, DDBT graphic adapted with permission from UW ALACRITY Center

The SOARS Project focuses primarily on the Optimization Phase of the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) Framework. Goals 1-3 leverage a factorial design to understand how different components of the SOARS intervention impact treatment effectiveness. My involvement in Goal 4 revisited the Design/Build Phase of the Discover, Design/Build, & Test Framework (DDBT). You can learn more about how we’ve utilized a DDBT + MOST methodological framework at SCRC here.

To achieve Goal 4, I created and co-facilitated 3 workshops where we engaged 11 outpatient medical providers:

  • We leveraged a journey map of the patient referral process to identify workflow improvement opportunities. Additionally, we administered three quantitative measures to assess the referral workflow: Acceptability of Intervention Measure (AIM), Feasibility of Intervention Measure (FIM), and System Usability Scale (SUS). These quantitative metrics were required standard measures for all studies funded by SCRC.

  • We presented three low-fidelity prototypes of the patient discharge process and gathered feedback. Using this feedback, we created an improved discharge message.

  • We reviewed the feedback provided by participants, including summarizing the AIM, FIM, and SUS results for the referral process. We also presented the improved discharge message and asked participants to assess this message using the AIM, FIM, and SUS.

Results

Results from this study have not yet been published. This section will be updated once results are publicly available.

Next

Suicide Treatement & Recovery in Integrated Behavioral Health