Design for Health: Building Early Relational Health

We aim to address key challenges in early relational health, which is defined as healthy and positive and nurturing parent/caregiver child relationships, in the context of safe and secure communities. One in 4 adults in the US has an adverse child experience, which is associated with lifetime risks of mental and physical chronic health conditions. By applying "health literacy" as a lens in the constraint of pediatric primary care, we aim to develop key insights and to design solutions to these key challenges - with a focus on children, families and communities that have been historically and systematically undeserved. To do so, we will listen deeply to expert perspectives from healthcare workers, community leaders, and family members. We will apply human-centered design and related methodologies in real-world settings (hospital, clinics and homes), responsive to problems prioritized by system leaders. We will address questions that arise when seeking to address literacy and language barriers to highly efficacious care for those in greatest need. Parents will be trained alongside Students with design skills to tackle this challenge. Results of this work will inform redesign across the >3000 pediatric clinics serving low-income communities through the Reach Out and Read National Network.