Design for Health

We aim to address intransigent problems in health, which have been resistant to change through traditional healthcare-delivery, public-health and academic medical systems. We aim to develop key insights and solutions to address social and technical challenges to delivering the right care, right place, right time -- especially for patients, families and communities that have been historically and systematically underserved. To do so, we will listen deeply to perspectives from clinicians (including nurses and community health workers), experts (public health, education, communication), community leaders, and patients and their caregivers. We will apply human-centered design and related methodologies in real-world settings (hospital, clinics and homes), responsive to real-world problems prioritized by system leaders. We will address questions that arise when seeking to deliver access to highly efficacious health treatments for those in greatest need. This includes medications, procedures, information, and behavioral supports that treat, prevent and promote health and wellness. Among the questions we may address: How might we design more effective health and public-health communication that counters misinformation? How might we better address the "diseases of despair" (depression, substance use, chronic illness)? How might we design a more effective system that brings the best evidence-based technology (e.g,, novel treatments, integrated behavioral health), tailored by personalized patient information (genomics, microbiomics, sociomics), to the essential workers on the front line (primary-care providers, nurse educators, community health workers, caregivers)?