What’s Happening with Systems Modeling & Washington Thriving
From February through April 2025, Washington Thriving and Systems Dynamics expert Chris Soderquist convened a small team of system partners (those who provide services, pay for them, govern and administer them) to participate in the process to build an initial system map. The team included system actors, decision-makers, and subject matter experts across domains in Washington’s P-25 Behavioral Health System. This included participants from education, healthcare, social services, child welfare, housing support, public health, and other relevant areas of the behavioral health system, as well as community members with lived and living experience.
The mapping sessions had a clear purpose: to create a picture of how Washington State’s behavioral health system currently works for young people from before birth through age 25 (P-25). The team deliberately worked to create a map that is simple enough to understand but still shows key connections, allowing users to see patterns that might be invisible when looking at just one part of the system. This meant focusing on the essential chains, feedback loops, and resource flows that drive system behavior, rather than trying to capture every detail of a highly complex system.
Why This Matters
Right now, Washington’s behavioral health system is split into many pieces. Young people and families often need to go to a variety of places for help, with different rules and requirements for each. This causes confusion, delays in care, and missed chances to help early.
A simplified model of how these pieces fit together will help the Washington Thriving team in discussing and testing ideas that might make the biggest positive impact before trying them in real life.
Guided by Lived Experience
The Washington Thriving Advisory Group—made up of people with lived and living expertise in the behavioral health system—is the strategic center for the work. Their vision, priorities, and questions have helped to frame the focus and approach of the initial mapping effort. These included (but were not limited to) important steers provided in the February 2025 Advisory Group meeting, such as:
The importance of caregiver & family experience and wellbeing as a driver of children's behavioral health
Factors such as access to, quality of, and coordination between services and supports (not just how many services exist) that play a role in the effectiveness of the system
The need for proper attention to early warning signs before crises happen
The reality of different experiences for different people based on factors like identity, insurance type, location within the state, and particular need
The importance of recognizing community wisdom and paths to wellness that might be overlooked by the “formal” Behavioral Health System
The Advisory Group will continue to steer the work to ensure it reflects real people's experiences in the system.
Inside the Initial Modeling Sessions
During the six sessions, the team shaped assumptions and mapped out:
How Washington’s young people move through the behavioral health system through their life course and based on need
How money and workers flow through the system
How vital conditions and basic needs like education, stable housing, healthy environments, economic stability, social supports and community connection, nutrition and food security, and more need to be in place before specialized behavioral health services can be fully effective
How factors like stigma, trust, and system overwhelm affect care and willingness to engage
Initial considerations for where small changes might create big improvements
One of the biggest "aha moments" for participants was the ability to visualize how little of our current formal system and funding focuses on prevention, early identification, and community-based support – what the team called "the left side of the map."
Where Can Washington Thriving Make the Biggest Difference?
Through these six sessions, several important themes and potential "leverage points" – places in the system where targeted changes could create outsized positive impacts – emerged for Washington Thriving:
Deepening upstream promotion, prevention, early identification, and community-based offerings on the "left side" of the map, where very little of the formal system and funding currently exists
Focusing on sensitive time periods when intervention can have the greatest impact, such as prenatal care and early childhood development
Strengthening the ability to find and treat problems early before they cause more serious symptoms or get worse, when issues are easiest to treat
Improving access to vital conditions like housing, social supports, and protective factors
System-level coordination as a way to reduce fragmentation and improve access
Building trust from the beginning of any interaction with the system
Addressing workforce support and training to increase both capacity and effectiveness
The team also identified the need for culturally specific strategies, including multigenerational practices and identity development supports, and better geographic accessibility of services across the state.
What Did We Create?
By the final session, the group developed a dynamic visual map that shows:
How people move through the behavioral health system across different age groups
How resources (funding, workforce, services) affect access and outcomes
The impact of factors like stigma, trust, and system overwhelm
Some potential leverage points for making positive changes
This isn't just a static picture – it’s an interactive tool that seeks to help users understand each component and how they connect. Once data and additional functionality are added, the model will allow people to explore a simplified view of how Washington State's P-25 Behavioral Health system dynamics work and the impact that changes in one area might have on other areas.
The team reviewed this map in our final session, identifying both missing elements and underutilized levers for change. As one participant shared, it was "helpful to zoom [from each of our particular areas of the system] and look at the big picture, recognizing both its complexity and also that if we can map it we can tackle it!"
What Happens Next
This mapping work is just the beginning. Over the coming weeks, Washington Thriving will:
Gather data to fill in the model with real numbers
Use subject matter expertise to fill data gaps where needed
Iterate the model-building process – starting with core main chains first and expanding in iterations
Develop an online interface for wider audience engagement
Document learnings throughout the process
The goal is to create a model (version 1.0) that can:
Reproduce current system performance
Suggest areas of leverage where changes could make the biggest difference
Provide a foundation for future learning (that could simulate specific investments, policies, interventions, or programs)
This tool will then be used to facilitate discussions with systems actors across Washington’s P-25 Behavioral Health System to consider where areas of investment might make the biggest difference. This work will help Washington Thriving make smart recommendations to the state legislature in November 2025 as part of a strategic plan for improving behavioral health for young Washingtonians.
Want to Learn More?
The Washington Thriving Advisory Group will be reviewing these findings on May 1, 2025. All are welcome to attend! For more information about Washington Thriving and our systems modeling work, email us at info@washingtonthriving.org.
Washington Thriving is developing a statewide strategic plan to improve the behavioral health system for prenatal through age 25 young people, their families and caregivers in Washington State. Systems modeling is one of many activities Washington Thriving is undertaking in 2025 to develop recommendations for the state's strategic plan.