MHACC Suicide Prevention
- Role
- Grant editor, research and design lead, and product manager on the caregiver app (57Blocks consulting)
- Client
- Mental Health Association for Chinese Communities (MHACC), Alameda County
- Year
- 2020 to 2021
- Status
- Program continues; UrSpace live on Apple App Store and Google Play
UrSpace and MiSunshine, both live today. These are MHACC's shipped implementations, not my design work. What I claim is the grant editing, the CBT recommendation, and product management on the caregiver app.
Result
I edited the grant proposals behind MHACC's mental health technology program, researched and recommended Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as the clinical modality, designed the CBT delivery flow through clickable wireframes, and product-managed the parallel Caregiver Support App. I also presented the program's quarterly progress to Alameda County, the review nonprofits must pass to show grant money is being used as intended. The CBT recommendation was accepted by the client and the county, and years later MHACC built its AI chatbot around that same framework.
Problem
The Chinese-American community in Alameda County has higher rates of mental health under-treatment than the general population, driven by language barriers, cultural stigma, and a clinical workforce that lacks bilingual capacity. Mainstream mental health apps assumed English fluency, Western framing of distress, and individual-therapy modalities that don't map cleanly onto Chinese-American cultural contexts.
MHACC had decades of community trust and clinical knowledge but no in-house product capacity or technology budget. The grant cycle required a complete proposal, prototype, and clinical justification before any funding moved. The solution had to be evidence-based (the county would not fund unvalidated approaches) and culturally legible (the community would not adopt anything that read as imported Western therapy).
My Role
Grant editing. Edited the proposals that secured Alameda County MHSA funding for the program. The proposals were led by a colleague; my contribution was editorial.
Clinical research and recommendation. Researched evidence-based interventions for suicide reduction in the target population and recommended Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as the highest-evidence modality. Both MHACC and the county accepted it, and it became the clinical spine of the program.
Design. Built the CBT delivery flow as a question-based interaction with explicit cognitive-distortion labeling (overgeneralization, catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking), and produced clickable wireframes for bilingual Chinese-English delivery.
County reporting. Presented the program's quarterly progress to Alameda County, the review nonprofits receiving MHSA grants must pass to demonstrate the money is being used as intended.
Product management on the Caregiver Support App. Ran product for the parallel app serving caregivers of family members with mental illness.
Scope boundary. The conversational AI chatbot in today's UrSpace product was built after my 57Blocks engagement ended and is not my design work.
Research and Insights
Strategic modality research. Evaluated evidence-based interventions for suicide reduction in the Chinese-American population to identify which therapeutic framework would satisfy both the county's evidence-based funding standard and the community's cultural context. Selected CBT based on its evidence base and adaptability to a question-and-response digital delivery format.
Cultural-fit constraints. Worked with MHACC leadership to identify cultural framing requirements. Some assumptions about cultural framing came from MHACC leadership rather than from the target users themselves, which is a limitation I'd address differently (see Reflection).
Solution and Process
The delivery flow was question-based, naming cognitive distortions explicitly so a user could recognize the pattern in their own thinking rather than only the feeling. It shipped bilingual in Chinese and English, which addressed the language barrier directly rather than through translation added later.
UrSpace today makes the opposite trade, conversational and lighter on labeling. That is MHACC's own product decision, made after my engagement ended.
The expansion to the Caregiver Support App applied the same modality to a related population, extending reach without a new clinical framework.
Impact and Metrics
The proposals I edited secured MHSA funding under Alameda County Procurement Contract No. 19477, establishing a multi-year mental health technology program for the Chinese-American community.
The CBT recommendation was accepted by both the clinical client and the county, and it held. Years after my engagement ended, MHACC built its AI chatbot around that same framework, which is the clearest evidence the clinical direction was sound.
Quarterly county reviews passed, keeping the program in good standing with its funder.
The program expanded to a second app for caregivers, bringing a related population into the same structure.
Reflection
I would user-test the cognitive-distortion-labeling choice with the target population earlier. Naming thought traps directly is therapeutically powerful but can land as confrontational for someone in distress, and MHACC's later conversational approach made the opposite trade. That was a real design question I could have answered with users during the wireframe stage rather than leaving it open.
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