Using population segmentation data to reveal barriers to good health and inform targeted approaches to overcome them.
Impact
Pathways provides value across all stages of a project and levels of a health system. Since 2019, Pathways has been used by partners in over twenty projects in seven countries to:
- Forecast expected impact with greater precision.
- Resource more effectively to reach target communities.
- Design for the unique needs of specific population segments.
- Evaluate actual impact against a known baseline.
Credit: Sonder Collective.
Pathways helped project implementers like me target women in local communities who are most in need of the interventions that we bring, particularly around family planning
Challenge
Current health systems around the globe are struggling to address the disproportionate burden of disease experienced by women and children. Vulnerable populations are underserved by vertical programs focused on isolated health issues that fail to account for individuals' full lived experiences and homogenous one-size-fits-all solutions that overlook the unique needs of distinct groups within communities.
Credit: Sonder Collective.
For the global health community, Pathways is the right direction in precision global health. It gives the policymakers and organizations a lens, a blueprint to make tailored interventions and customize public policies.
Approach
Pathways provides a means to capture and understand the complex relationships of multidimensional factors that influence behaviors and outcomes–looking both broadly at systems and deeply at individual services or groups. Sonder applied its full range of capabilities to develop, implement, and scale Pathways including:
- Branding, Communications, and Marketing: Creating a compelling brand system and strategy, messaging framework and assets, and digital marketing campaigns to drive awareness and adoption of Pathways across the global health community.
- Community Development: Developing and supporting a community of practice through in-person and digital events and launched a Global Stakeholder Group made up of global health champions to provide strategic guidance and support to the initiative. 

- Product Design: Designing and building a publicly available digital platform that makes population segmentation data, insights, and easy-to-use design and decision-making tools available as an open-source public good.

- Project Management and Operations: Orchestrating a complex, multi-stakeholder, multi-year $15M+ initiative staffed by a team of over 30 consultants from concept through implementation and scale.

- Research and Development: Developing an interdisciplinary approach, integrating human-centered design with social, behavioral, and data sciences, to explore how households across a population may differ socially, economically, culturally, and environmentally – and how these differences influence health outcomes.

- Technical Assistance: Providing hands-on support and documentation to help global health partners apply Pathways to better understand and address their specific challenges, and launching the Pathways Impact Fund to support organizations in strengthening their services through the use of Pathways data.
Partners
