Advocate Health wanted to understand where healthcare should play in the expanding wellness market. We conducted nationwide research to identify who they should serve, what unmet needs existed, and how to prioritize product development in a consumer-led way.

Advocate was entering a crowded and rapidly growing wellness space without clarity on where a healthcare system could meaningfully participate. They had ideas for products across weight management, sleep, memory health, and virtual primary care, but no clear sense of who needed them most or how to prioritize. The risk was building offerings no one wanted or spreading too thin across multiple consumer segments.

We spoke with nearly 200 consumers across Advocate's footprint in Wisconsin, Illinois, Georgia, and North Carolina through in-home ethnographies and focus groups. I led participant recruitment, facilitated the research sessions, and synthesized findings into a set of behavioral wellness personas. We then validated and sized these personas quantitatively to understand demographic patterns and market opportunity. This work surfaced five distinct consumer segments, each with different expectations of healthcare in their wellness journey.

The key recommendation we made was to focus on one target consumer rather than try to serve all five. This gave Advocate a clear lens for evaluating product ideas and roadmapping across wellness territories.

Our target consumer profile, personas, and segmentation frameworks became the foundation of Advocate's wellness strategy. They shifted from a product-led approach to a consumer-led one, using our research to gut-check features and prioritize development in weight management, sleep, memory health, and virtual primary care. The work gave them a way to cut through the noise and focus on unmet needs that aligned with both consumer expectations and Advocate's strengths as a health system.