What if the biggest barrier to resolving a family’s needs isn’t the referral, but everything that happens after it? 

Across health and human service referral networks, service receipt rates range from roughly 25% in passive, technology-only models to as high as 88% when human navigators and funded community-based organizations help close the loop. The difference isn’t simply technology—it’s how the network is designed. 

Drawing on her research, Professor Michelle Shumate will explore what it takes to build referral networks that lead to meaningful outcomes. She’ll highlight three critical practices: getting network structure and governance right before layering on technology; investing in the human infrastructure and backbone support that make coordination possible; and designing networks around actual community capacity.