Do Tank helped statewide leaders move from fragmented perspectives on rural maternal health to a shared reform agenda grounded in frontline reality. Insights from providers, patients, and community partners informed new coordination strategies and policy conversations across Missouri. Today, our 2024 Missouri Community Forums Report serves as a primary driver for statewide policy and the foundation for developing value-based maternal care models and closed-loop referral innovations.
More than half of Missouri’s counties are maternity care deserts, forcing mothers to travel long distances for essential services and placing sustained pressure on local providers. Efforts to improve outcomes are often constrained by siloed workstreams and a limited understanding of how maternal care is actually experienced. State leaders needed a more authentic, system-level view of barriers to access and continuity — one that could align stakeholders around coordinated action rather than isolated initiatives.
Do Tank’s Role:
- Designed and operationalized a statewide human-centered discovery initiative
- Created structured collaborative forums to surface frontline system insight
- Facilitated multi-stakeholder strategy working sessions using visual decision frameworks
- Guided clinicians, administrators, and community leaders through prioritization exercises
- Synthesized qualitative and quantitative findings into an actionable system reform roadmap
Do Tank led an immersive research series across four regions of Missouri, intentionally convening stakeholders within communities most affected by access challenges. Forums combined listening sessions with structured design exercises that enabled participants to map current care pathways, identify coordination breakdowns, and test ideas for improving continuity.
Rather than collecting insight for analysis alone, the process focused on building shared ownership for change. Participants evaluated practical options for workforce innovation, referral redesign, and new partnership models. This participatory approach helped leaders move beyond anecdotal understanding toward a clearer architecture for improving maternal health delivery across rural regions.
More than 1,700 individual insights were synthesized into a statewide report that now serves as a trusted evidence base for reform efforts. Stakeholder teams generated 21 strategic “Big Ideas,” including new approaches to care navigation and workforce deployment designed to reduce fragmentation.
The work directly informed development of a maternal health referral hub intended to strengthen coordination between clinical and community providers. By translating community voice into structured strategy and early implementation concepts, Do Tank helped leaders shift from broad advocacy toward targeted prototyping and investment in scalable system improvements.
This engagement reinforced that sustainable maternal health improvement depends on designing how care systems function in practice. When organizations create space for frontline voices to shape strategic decisions, alignment improves and momentum builds. The project demonstrated how participatory strategy design can unlock practical pathways for reform while strengthening trust across stakeholders.