Federal Health Experience. Community-Centered Results.
For more than 25 years, Priya Helweg has worked at the intersection of federal health policy and the communities those policies are meant to serve. Intarsia Strategies brings that experience directly to Tribal Nations, health centers, public health agencies, and community organizations — helping them navigate complex systems, build effective partnerships, and use the right tools to do more with what they have.
Priya Helweg, MA | Founder
What We Do
Patient-Centered Engagement and Partnership Development
Trust is not a deliverable. It is built over time, in the right way, with the right people.
Effective engagement starts with understanding who you are trying to reach and what they actually need. Priya designs outreach and partnership strategies grounded in cultural competence, community voice, and sustained relationship-building. Her experience spans Tribal governments, rural and frontier communities, older adults, AI/AN populations, multicultural constituencies, and historically underserved groups.
The goal is not just participation — it is the kind of trusted partnership that holds up when priorities shift and funding cycles end. That means designing processes that communities recognize as genuinely theirs, not just ones they were invited into.
Federal Health Policy Navigation
Federal policy is complicated. Understanding what it means for your organization does not have to be.
Priya spent more than two decades inside CMS and HHS translating federal requirements into regional strategy and local action. She now does the same for clients — helping organizations understand what Medicaid, Medicare, the ACA, Tribal health provisions, and federal health initiatives mean for them, and what steps they can actually take.
Whether you are responding to a policy change, preparing for a federal review, or trying to align your programs with shifting federal priorities, she brings the fluency and the practical experience to help you move with confidence.
Technology Strategy and Administrative Modernization
The right technology should reduce burden, not add to it. And it should never compromise what your organization stands for.
Technology implemented without context can undermine trust, create new inequities, or simply not fit the way people actually work.
Intarsia Strategies helps organizations think through what tools make sense for their specific situation. That includes using current technology and AI-assisted platforms to streamline data matching, reduce grant reporting and compliance burdens, and build systems that let your staff focus on care instead of paperwork. Every strategy is developed in partnership with your team, built around your values, and tested against the real-world constraints of frontline health work.
The goal is not to digitize everything. It is to identify where technology genuinely helps — and put it to work in ways your organization can sustain and trust.
About Priya Helweg
Priya A. Helweg, MA, is an executive leader with more than 25 years of experience in health policy, strategic engagement, partnership development, and collaboration. She has designed and led engagement strategies that aligned national health initiatives with local priorities, advancing access, transparency, value-based care, and systems change.
At the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Region 10, she organized and facilitated cross-sector initiatives that improved the health and well-being of over 15 million residents. Her leadership included aligning regional outreach with national campaigns on Medicare affordability, Medicaid redetermination, rural health, workforce development, and health equity — while engaging providers, patients, Tribal leaders, and historically underserved populations.
Her federal career included senior roles at HHS Region 10, where she served as Acting Regional Director and Senior Intergovernmental Affairs Officer, and at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where she led regional implementation of the Affordable Care Act and Health Insurance Marketplace and served as a national resource on AI/AN access to Medicare and Medicaid, Tribal consultation policy, and culturally appropriate outreach and communications.
Prior to federal service, she worked in Washington, D.C. for The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, The Morris K. Udall Foundation, and The Smithsonian Institution. She holds a master's degree from the University of British Columbia.
Let's Talk
If your organization is navigating federal health programs, building community partnerships, or looking for technology strategies that fit the way you actually work, Intarsia Strategies can help.
Priya@IntarsiaStrategies.comBased in Seattle, Washington. Serving clients nationally.