——— POLICY ARCHITECT · MENTAL HEALTH · INTRACTABLE PROBLEMS
Reflective design for complex problems
I work on problems that institutions cannot articulate well — in health, in public policy, and beyond. They arrive as questions about measurement or management, or as an indicator that won’t behave — and what is actually missing is an architecture: a shared criterion for ordering what already exists and for integrating evidence traditions that don’t talk to each other.
I find that criterion, design the architecture, and build the instruments that make it work. I do this from within or near the systems I advise.
— Felipe Peña-Quintanilla
Public policy
Designing and ordering national policy — where the challenge is to integrate rather than address a single topic. Chile’s National Mental Health Plan (forthcoming).
Problems without a map
Institutional problems without a precedent to follow — where no model yet exists, and one must be built. Impact evaluation of a university’s third mission; measurement of people’s capacity to innovate.
Problems that resist solution
The problems a system finds hardest to face — where the disagreement reaches what the problem even is. Stigma against sexual and gender diversity; end-of-life care.