Health Matters: Reframing Design in Community Health Interventions

Abstract

Garden on the Go, a signature obesity prevention effort, is Indiana University Health's year round mobile produce delivery program, providing fresh, affordable produce to Indianapolis neighborhoods in need. As the mobile nature of the service is well aligned with context based approaches in Service Design, the design researchers perceived potentials to reconfigure the Garden on the Go service as well as to reframe a health care service model from institution to people based. In partnership with the Garden on the Go community outreach team and the Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University, design researchers from Herron School of Art and Design initiated the "Health Matters" study in 2013. The ultimate objective of the study aims to define 1. How individuals in underserved communities define health and 2. How interventions should be created and deployed to provide appropriate programing that addresses community-centered needs. The project is currently at the recruitment stage, we expect to release final research outcomes in the fall of 2014. This presentation, specifically focusing on the interdisciplinary research process, will address the role of the design researcher/ service designer in interdisciplinary settings and discuss the methodology of intervention design from the disciplinary perspective