Core A—Systems of Care
CfC’s Research Core A applies a transdisciplinary approach to help our collaborators better understand and address some of the interconnected challenges that have manifested in our communities and healthcare systems. From the opioid and overdose crisis in Rhode Island to issues of health disparities, CfC has advanced the role of design for providing new methods of generating evidence and understanding. In addition, through careful relationship building, observation, systems mapping, and engagement with diverse stakeholders, CfC has gained deep contextual understanding of these crises of care to support our future work.
This research has taken various forms such as collaborative design studios with field leaders that co-created innovative solutions, while exploring design and stigma revealed how an anti-stigma approach could lead to more humanistic care. CfC has taught two RISD studios on anti-stigma design and harm reduction as contemporary design principles applicable to public health and beyond, providing students with opportunities for hands-on experience and mastery in applying transdisciplinary methods to complex social challenges. The forthcoming Anti-Stigma Design Manual will codify CfC’s research into practical tools for creating caring, inclusive environments and the forthcoming publication on our collaboration with UCSF will share all the tools and practices designed to build a complex multidisciplinary collaboration for healthcare improvement.
Our symposia and public lectures created opportunities for researchers, healthcare professionals and patient advocates to engage in discourse with designers, students and the public. These multi-modal exchanges of knowledge and experience provided discipline-specific insight to designers, and helped elevate design research and creative practice as rigorous methods of inquiry and problem solving. This pioneering transdisciplinary work has reframed complex issues, translated research into actionable insights, interventions and tools, engaging RISD and medical students in the process.
Through this work we have been laying the groundwork for a robust curriculum in systems design in healthcare.
