How do we set the stage for better health, by design?
The world is in crisis today. It has more than ever before- and more to lose as well. At the core of this crisis is our health as a planet, as people, and as a society. This course is set up to explore systemic issues of health and address them along the design continuum- from information to product, to place, to policy, while being anchored on the environments we live in, and the human minds & behaviors that shape them. It is practice-based and focused on making real, actionable, meaningful change.
This course is founded on the belief that design makes a difference. We will learn how to link design intent to health outcomes and explore what it means to truly improve health and wellbeing. What are the measures? Are they meaningful? Do they matter? We will learn about evidence-based design and evidence-challenging design. We will learn about core areas like public health, clinical outcomes, safety, technology, and human perception- and then seek to bridge this insight, across disciplines, towards the foundation of any health delivery system- Primary Care.
Guest speakers will join most of these classes, held in the evening to better include professionals- from private companies, health systems, and non-profit agencies. Each session will have a catalyst presentation, an interdisciplinary conversation, and a point of view generation. The outcome of the course will be an open-source web publication on the healthbydesign website with a proposed design intervention/ innovation that is actionable, bridges disciplines, and addresses the design continuum.
We encourage students from various disciplines to take this course- so we can have a rich dialogue and an actionable outcome. This semester we will work with the Departments of medicine, nutrition and public health, and use the work on Home as a Healthcare Hub as a starting point. Students will get a chance to work on designing both digital and physical interfaces with clinical input throughout the course to create a system solution that is implementable and impactful.
