Abstract
Background: Co-design methods have become increasingly popular for realizing more inclusive research practices with end-user experts-by-experience who have a variety of important roles related to integrated care in their communities—from citizen to patient, provider, care partner, leader, decision-maker and beyond. While this methodological shift has resulted in positive trends related to democratizing science and enhancing creativity in the research process, methodological limitations and scientist skillsets tend to overemphasize traditional knowledge product outputs targeted at the meso (organizational) or macro (system) levels, including frameworks, guidelines, policies, procedures and research papers. While these are important, transformative health system change cannot be achieved by these methods alone. Complementary point-of-care (micro) solutions are needed to promote community-enabled health and well-being—and these must include creative and practical tools that can be used by providers, patients and families.
Audience: SE Health is a national not-for-profit social enterprise in Canada with a purpose to spread hope and happiness and the SE Research Centre is embedded in SE Health to conduct scientifically autonomous research to improve the health and care of Canadians. J5 Design is a design studio working in Canada and the United States with a purpose to create a kinder and more beautiful future. In this workshop we will explore the shared goals of embedded health services researchers and service designers related to contributing towards meaningful social impact. This session will be of interest to delegates working to realize mission-driven sustainable solutions that promote health and wellbeing and the authentic engagement of people as partners in health and social care.
Approach: Following an interactive warmup exercise exploring the intersecting co-design skillsets of researchers and designers (5 minutes), we will describe the Participatory Research to Action (PR2A) Framework and its development and use to bridge the rigour of science with the creativity of design (5 minutes). Next, we will share a real-world example using the PR2A to guide the research and design journey of building an evidence-informed toolkit to support mental health conversations in home and community care across Canada (10 minutes). International delegates will then be engaged in a small group prototype-testing exercise to illustrate the value of tactile engagement of end-users for challenging assumptions related to portability, accessibility, flexibility, durability, and cost in different contexts (20 minutes). Following the activity, groups will have the opportunity to share back reflections with the larger group related to sustainable scale and spread opportunities for the mental health conversations toolkit (10 minutes).
Outcomes: Information summaries of the PR2A Framework will be shared to support delegate learning related to co-design practices from health services research and service design traditions. Delegates will have the opportunity to work with prototypes of tools from the toolkit for the mental health conversations initiative as examples of knowledge products from point-of-care research, which could be spread and scaled to other international contexts. At the end of the session, common threads and key takeaways will be summarized to support application of workshop content in delegates’ daily work and practice (10 minutes).