As part of AcademyHealth’s Paradigm Project, volunteer “design teams” spent two years generating and testing innovations to disrupt the status quo in health services research. Teams leveraged the tools of human-centered design (HCD) to address structural challenges facing the field, such as barriers to studying the questions of interest to decision-makers, getting the evidence to end-users in a timely, accessible way, and addressing long-standing issues of inequity and bias in the workforce and methods.
A lack of diversity in thought and lived experience among researchers can leave important questions and perspectives ignored in the planning, conduct, and interpretation of research. One Paradigm Project Design Team was tasked with addressing the challenge of ensuring that the health services research (HSR) workforce includes the right people and partners, by co-creating and sustaining environments in HSR where a diverse set of voices is respected, heard, and valued. This team designed a “day of action and impact” event for people who are actively engaged or interested in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field to come together for connection, self-reflection, and action-planning to drive institutional change.
Watch the video below to learn more about the event and lessons gleaned from piloting the concept with various audiences.
Learn more about the larger movement to advance more timely, impactful research, and the other four innovations resulting from the Paradigm Project: