Population health interventions
Optimizing population health interventions in the public and private sector — the current focus of Augustson Consulting LLC.
For teams whose program is live and still not changing behavior
If people know what they should do and still don’t do it
Augustson Consulting LLC is the consulting practice of Dr. Erik Augustson. It works with government and public health teams when the program exists, the message is clear, and the behavior still doesn’t move.
15 years directing Smokefree.gov · Reached millions of smokers annually · Former National Cancer Institute · WHO advisory work
About
Dr. Erik Augustson, PhD, MPH
If you need someone who has run a federal program at scale — not only advised one — this is the practice.
Former National Cancer Institute. Directed the Smokefree.gov Initiative from 2003 to 2018 — a federal mHealth program across web, text, apps, and social, reaching millions of smokers each year.
He is a clinical psychologist and public health scientist. PhD in Clinical Psychology, MPH in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has advised national and global public health efforts, including work with the World Health Organization.
Today he works as Principal Consultant at Augustson Consulting LLC, from San Francisco — optimizing population health interventions in the public and private sector.
Skills
What the practice actually does
Behavioral research
Behavioral research and implementation projects, including analysis and planning for live programs.
mHealth and digital delivery
Web, text, apps, and social interventions at federal scale, including the Smokefree.gov Initiative.
Scientific communication
Scientific communication and proposal support.
Federal program experience
Directed the Smokefree.gov Initiative at the National Cancer Institute and collaborated across HHS agencies.
Health communication
Health communication for programs people can act on, including NIH Plain Language Award work on Smokefree.gov.
Services
Work that sits inside real programs, not beside them
We work inside the live system — not in a slide deck that never ships.
1
Behavioral diagnostics
If uptake is low and no one can say why
Understand why a policy, program, or digital service is not producing the intended behavior — the friction, the incentives, and the real constraints.
2
Intervention design
If the intervention is evidence-based and unused
Turn evidence into practical changes in communications, services, and choice architecture that people can actually use.
3
Implementation support
If the team has the science and not the operating version
Help public-sector teams put behavioral approaches into live systems.
4
Evaluation and learning
If you need to know whether people actually used it after launch
Build simple ways to test what works after launch and refine from the data, not the pitch.
Approach
1
Diagnostic review. Map why the live program is not landing.
2
Collaborative design. Build changes the team can actually run.
3
Implementation and feedback. Put it in the system and measure use.
Work
Results
Public programs. Named where the work is already on the record; otherwise described by the type of institution.
Federal digital health program
Smokefree.gov Initiative, National Cancer Institute
- Problem
- A single cessation website could not keep pace with how people actually sought help — on phones, in text, in apps, and in Spanish and youth-facing channels.
- Approach
- Turned a standalone site into a multi-platform intervention system: web, SMS, apps, and social, with dedicated products for women, Spanish speakers, and teens, plus ongoing evaluation of what people used after launch.
- Result
- Grew into the largest federal mHealth behavior-change program of its kind, reaching on the order of 3–6 million smokers a year across the ecosystem — not a brochure rewrite, a live operating system.
International public health agency
Technical assistance on digital tobacco treatment, including WHO-related advisory work
- Problem
- Evidence-based cessation methods existed on paper. Ministries and partner agencies still lacked a practical way to deliver them at population scale on the channels people already used.
- Approach
- Advised on how to adapt federal mHealth patterns — text programs, web interventions, measurement — to other health systems rather than exporting a U.S. website as-is.
- Result
- Helped shift the conversation from “build an app” to “stand up a delivery system people will actually use,” with reach measured in millions of interactions, not workshop attendance.
Does this fit your program?
Start a conversationContact
If a policy, program, or service depends on behavior change and it isn’t landing — start here
Direct email erik@augustsonconsulting.com. San Francisco.