Responsive to a real-world challenge from a federal health agency, this course aims to blend the best methods of co-design with key insights from digital product design and foundational AI to create novel solutions to a population-health challenge, working alongside people from communities that have been historically underserved. Students will work with patients with chronic illness (and their caregivers) to co-design solutions that reimagine the future of primary care and population health. To understand these challenges, we will explore the intersections among epidemiology of chronic illness, fiscal and policy constraints, and social well-being. We will place a special emphasis on the practical challenge of delivering the right care, at the right place and time. Stakeholders will include clinicians, community experts, technologists and payers. Students will work in teams to design, prototype and test concepts that reflect the worlds in which their co-design partners live and work, all with an eye to helping our healthcare system work better for them.   

The health care system is broken, particularly for communities in greatest need. At least 1 in 3 individuals with chronic conditions has an unmet health need. Many of these conditions are preventable, intergenerational, and exacerbated by the disruption in social interaction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most chronic conditions emerge in early childhood and among marginalized communities with limited health literacy or facing significant language barriers. The estimated preventable annual cost to the US economy alone exceeds $700 billion. The cost to patients and their families is immeasurable and felt at the level of an individual caregiver, who must navigate a byzantine system to meet a critical health need at a meaningful moment, such as new diagnosis, an extended hospitalization, or unmanageable pain.  

Facing this national crisis, leaders from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the federal agency charged with setting national standards for chronic illness care, have offered a real-world challenge to d.School students: Redesign a meaningful moment, when a patient facing a new, life-threatening chronic condition is struggling to navigate a path to high-quality, community-based services. 

To meet this real-world challenge, the course aims to engage patients and their caregivers as co-designers to develop new prototypes for primary care and population health that return health equity and dignity back to the moments that matter in healthcare. In redesigning for these moments, students will learn from a wide group of stakeholders, including patients, caregivers, medical providers, medical informaticists, community leaders, and complementary and alternative healers. In the context of design thinking, students will be challenged to answer the following questions, among others: What does the moment feel like, from the perspective of each stakeholder? How might we design a product or service that helps each person to navigate the system to meet community-based health needs at that moment? How might we ensure that the moment is redesigned in such a way as to reduce disparities for families with limited health literacy or language barriers?

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