Interview with Bridgette Collado

Behavioural Science is a rapidly expanding field and everyday new research is being developed in academia, tested and implemented by practitioners in financial organisations, development agencies, government ‘nudge’ units and more. This interview is part of a series interviewing prominent people in the field. And in today's interview the answers are provided by Bridgette Collado. Bridgette is an applied behavioral scientist working at the intersection of health, equity, and technology. She is a credentialed registered dietitian (nutritionist) spending the first few years of her career in clinical nutrition and nutritional epidemiology. Bridgette pivoted into applied behavioral science through the field of health communication, holding a Master's Degree from a collaborative program between Emerson College and Tufts University School of Medicine. She has been working in behavioral design in the organizational and product space for over 15 years. She is currently a full-time advisor on consumer experience strategy and operations for a health system in Michigan (U.S.) and an independent advisor and consultant to companies in the digital health space. Bridgette has been recognized for her work in several publications over the last few years, including in Forbes Leadership.

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How did you get into applied behavioral science? 

This may be a little long-winded, but having read some of your other interviews, I thought I can probably share more with you! I started out my career as a registered dietician in nutrition, and when I was in the my nutrition program in the late 90s and early 2000s, the one piece of behavioral change theory I remember learning was only an aspect of the transtheoretical model – stages of change – which so many of us know. The approach I was taught was very top-down: here's your diet plan, follow it, then come back and see me. We were also trained to ask about some of the context of a person’s life around eating, but it really lacked a behavioral lens. It didn’t take long for me to see that it didn't work. And so I became pretty disillusioned with my field fairly quickly, and spent a couple years trying different pathways just to figure out what it was I wanted to do.

Ultimately, I started putting strings of words together like ‘health’ and ‘media’ or ‘design’ to find out how I could possibly bring together more of the things that I like to do, which included to be able to be more creative. I then found a company that really piqued my interest. They were bought by Johnson and Johnson, to my understanding, but they were called Health Media. They were doing some early digital adaptation of health interventions, leveraging motivational interviewing. I cold emailed their founder – Vic Strecher – who responded quickly and offered to chat with me. He put me on this trajectory of applied behavioral science, and I'm forever grateful. During our call, he suggested that I look into health communication. It didn’t take long for me to decide I was going to go to grad school for health communication. I chose to go to a program in Boston that was a collaboration between Emerson College and Tufts School of Medicine. It was very unique in that I got such a broad view of what can really feed into the lens of applied behavioral science. I actually think that the program would have been probably better named that – applied behavioral science – than health communication. It did have a focus on health behavior change, but it certainly wasn't limited to that. For instance, we also deep dove into Social Marketing. Our courses covered many of the behavioral theories, but we also had epidemiology, health literacy, human-computer interaction, and electives, which I chose to fill with organizational communication and user experience design. It was just a fantastic program that unfortunately doesn't exist anymore.

And so I ended up mostly focusing my work in the digital health space. A lot of the early days I worked as a lone designer, doing intervention design, but also thinking through all of the user experience flows and content creation. If you look through my resume, I've had varied titles, but I always approach my work essentially the same way through an applied behavioral science lens.

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Given the different applications and titles, what is your biggest achievement or the thing that you are most proud of so far, as a behavioral scientist? 

While I cherish all of my experiences, and I've had many. Before I had kids, I would have a full-time job, often also be adjunct teaching and consulting as well. So, I have a lot of different experiences racked up now! And they're all so wonderful. I've gotten to work in so many different areas of health. But there are two things that really stand out.

One is my time at the U.S. Suicide Prevention Resource Center. In part, because I felt like the work was so meaningful and in another part, because I got to see how much positive change that was created through an applied behavioral science approach to our work. I was a part of the executive team, overseeing communication and product development in that role. Our team won several awards for a few of the products my team created during that time. In that role, I also had a very unique experience having an accredited library under my umbrella as well. The librarians and I also considered how we might consider different behavioral approaches to help make the library a more useful tool for the suicide prevention community.

Second, was an experience working on the strategy and design of a digital therapeutic for COPD. I was not only working with other stellar designers, but also the scientists who were helping to model outcomes measures for behavior change programs, and it was fantastic to be able to connect all those dots. It might surprise you that evaluation has often been very difficult to get resources for in much of my work experiences. When health behavior change efforts can sometimes have no or a negative impact, it’s super important we evaluate what we’re putting out there in the world, yet in the health field, we still have a ways to go.

What is it that you still want to achieve?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. In part, because of the volatility of the last few years; I have necessarily had to switch jobs 3 times in 3 years, due to some mergers and acquisitions and layoffs. With each change, I'm asking myself: ‘what do I want’? I am about six months into a new role with a new consumer experience team at a health system in Michigan. There’s a lot of opportunity to infuse a behavioral science approach here and there are a few other folks who are familiar and are champions. So I hope I have the opportunity here to really dig in for years and see incremental positive change, in a similar way I got to see that outcome of my work at the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. I'll be happiest anyplace where I have the opportunity to bring that rigor to the work and look at the outcomes and not just the fluffy metrics of “engagement.”

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Having been through so many changes, how do you think behavioral science is likely going to develop as a field, over the next decade or so? 

One thing I think we will see a lot more of is leveraging machine learning and generative AI to enhance predictive intervention modeling and increase delivery through conversation with computers. Machine learning has been a part of my work for probably 15 years already in partnership with my behavioral data science counterparts – taking big data sources and user actions to predict the next best action or intervention. The AI advancements recently have only made me more excited, particularly on the conversation design side of things. When I first started, I had a very hard time imagining that an AI could function as a conversation agent with the same competencies that someone (a human) would use to do motivational interviewing with someone in a therapeutic setting. I didn't see a computer getting that sophisticated. And now I'm in awe of some of these clinical AI responses which are very aligned. Sometimes they deliver more empathetic responses than what many clinicians are actually saying out there, so I'm very excited.

I also see behavioral science as a likely driver of ethical AI applications. How do we test to make sure that it's not causing harm? And this is part of the strategy and evaluation that is often not there. The ‘fail fast’ approach might work for some contexts, but in digital health, when you're talking about people's lives, that’s not an option. There's a time and a place for moving quickly. But sometimes we need to slow down and make sure that we're asking the right questions and being very strategic. And know how we're going to measure things.

So what, if anything, do you recommend if someone wants to get into the field of behavioral science? Some people are more disposed to getting a graduate degree or really want to go back to school, and that is a great avenue for many. But there are probably three main things that I suggest they consider before they make that choice:

1. There are some top content creators or places where you can find more information about behavioral science and learn on your own. There's no shortage of books or other ways of learning more first.

2. Then I would advise joining some of the behavioral science communities that have popped up in recent years, like the BeSci.io community and Bescy. These are especially good for people interested in but still learning about applied behavioral science, as well as long-time practitioners, alike.

3. And then I can point them to some of the formal education programs that I know of and which fields they might find relevant programs, from social science, to economics, to psychology and many others.

So which skills would you say are absolutely non-negotiable for a behavioral scientist? 

1. I think the very first thing is you have to have a lens on behavior. Always. When I evaluate intervention or product design strategy (which I often do in my consulting or from outside agencies in my work) I still often see that in the problem framing they’re not actually talking about a behavior.

2. Additionally, you have to develop this perspective of every single behavior being contextual. It’s incredibly important to understand the context of the actions you’re trying to influence, from individual factors up through social structure. We know that people can do totally opposite things, the same person, depending on their context. It helps us understand barriers and facilitators for the individual or group, but also helps us understand what we can and cannot influence to help create the right conditions for change.

3. Third is evaluation. To apply behavioral science well, you’re going to have to constantly ask: ‘how are we evaluating this’? Even if you are not the evaluation expert, you need to push for evaluation support in your work.

4. And the last is ethics. You're not really truly doing behavioral science if you're not also considering the ethics of what you're doing, which can sometimes get murky and require thoughtfulness.

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On a more personal note, do you have any personal frustrations with the field of Applied Behavioral Science? 

I think there is still a bias toward PhD level experience in the health tech space. Every academic program has their strengths and weaknesses, but I think some general observations I’ve made over the years is that while the PhD prepares graduates to excel in research, not all programs are created equal when it comes to translational or applied settings. While I have considered a PhD many times over the years, I have continued to hold off on such a huge commitment since my passion is in application and I’ve been very successful and lucky in my career so far. But I see few top leaders in my space at the Master’s level (and the job postings requiring a PhD) and I think companies that close the door to other possibilities really limit the talent pool. I have worked alongside many skilled applied behavioral scientists at all degree levels that also demonstrated the necessary leadership skills to hold top roles.

Do you actually apply behavioral science to your own life? 

I do! I actually think about how to apply behavioral science in my life a lot. From a macro level, I think working in this field helps me continually strive to be a better version of myself since I’m always thinking about behavior and behavior change. It helps me approach others in a more open and inquisitive way too. This is VERY helpful when it comes to my parenting as well. I wonder why they’re behaving that way? What is going on for them that they might be making x, y, or z choice or behavior? I could go on and on about how this helps me think about what I’m seeing in the media, etc. but that should be a whole other conversation with a cozy beverage! Thinking about particular use cases in my life though, I leverage a lot from the goal setting research. Setting ambitious goals for myself and breaking them into smaller – sometimes MANY smaller – goals. I often allow myself a certain number of ‘cheat’ days if I’m trying to develop a new routine or habit…and use reflection for action exercises to think about those days I may have missed. I ask myself what changed in my context that I might be able to overcome the next time I encounter that situation and how will I do that? I also use intent and accountability structures to help me stick to my plans.

But one of the things I am getting better and better at that is also very behavioral science-y is be a good support to myself. I do not beat myself up or think I cannot do a thing because I didn’t meet my goal. I give myself grace. Many people can probably relate that this was very hard to do, especially if you didn’t have this modeled for you earlier in life. As I was learning to have a more positive inner dialog, one of things I did was to imagine how I would support someone else and then say those things to my inner critic. I have a bit of an advantage as a trained health coach to imagine what that support would like, I have to point out.

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Let’s do a sliding doors moment: you had a very windy path coming to the position that you're currently in, and ultimately you are an Applied Behavioral Scientist. Do you think that there is an alternate universe where you didn’t find Behavioral Science, and what would you have been then? That's a good question. In a very alternate universe that might've been a jazz singer or something that went all in on my creative side. But if I never got that call from Vic Strecker maybe I would have ended up doing something that was media related, especially as my behavioral science still involves a lot of communication and creation. So I think I might have ended up just going in more of a strictly marketing or communications direction.

Who has inspired you throughout this journey? Who else would you recommend me to interview? 

I already mentioned Vic Strecher several times and he inspired me in such a way to change my life, so I’d definitely recommend reaching out to Vic. I would also recommend talking to Robin Anthony Kouyate, my former leader at Walgreens. I would also highly recommend talking to Aline Holzwarth, if you haven’t talked with her already. Aline is always such an inspiration to me, blazing new trails in the world of behavioral science all the time.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions Bridgette!

As I said before, this interview is part of a larger series which can also be found here on the blog. Make sure you don't miss any of those, nor any of the upcoming interviews!

Keep your eye on Money on the Mind!