PURPOSE: To demonstrate the steps and relevance of building constrained optimization models in the context of addressing important health care decisions, such as kidney matching. Session content draws from the second paper of the ISPOR Constrained Optimization Methods in Health Services Research Task Force, which broadly illustrates the development and evaluation of constrained optimization models in health care. The session is intended both for modelers and for consumers of modeling. DESCRIPTION: There is growing interest in using optimization modeling to improve clinical and economic outcomes in healthcare, but there are not yet standard guidelines for modeling and reporting. Moreover, most health care applications of optimization methods have focused on traditional operations research problems such as facilities management, minimizing supply costs, etc. that commonly arise in health care operations. The workshop will focus on the role that optimization models can have in improving clinical outcomes. We will illustrate the steps in building and evaluating model performance using problems arriving in organ donation. This case study is drawn from a published influential kidney matching model that has been widely adopted and estimated to have saved hundreds of lives (Anderson et al., 2015). Topics covered will include background on the complexity of kidney matching, structuring the model, estimating key parameters, model validation and sensitivity analysis. We will discuss the importance of communicating results and translating them into action. In the optimal kidney matching case, for example, overcoming skepticism and resistance within the medical community required strong trans-collaboration between teams of physicians and operations researchers. The workshop will include an interactive discussion about the ability of optimization methods to address real-world problems versus oversimplified versions of these instances—in particular, the tension between model simplification and the usefulness of optimization modeling in application. Finally, we will outline open questions and challenges in using optimization methods to model and analyze healthcare decisions. Presented by the ISPOR Optimization Methods in Health Services Research Emerging Good Practices Task Force