As a research assistant for the Emily Carr Health Design Lab (HDL) I worked in partnership with the BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre (BCW). The BCW reached out to the HDL with an interest in learning more about the needs of women aged 45 - 70. Their team had identified that this population has underserved needs that are outside their current core services. Through a human-centered design approach we collected over 1000+ survey responses as well as conducting a participatory design process with 50+ workshop participants. Our first workshop sessions welcomed women in this stage of life, while the second sessions welcomed a diverse range of healthcare professionals.
The project started out in the Fall of 2018 and was completed in the Spring of 2019. The key things we heard from women were:
💬 Education on what to expect at this stage in life to support preventative self-care and monitoring
💬 Routine comprehensive wellness assessments to help women and care providers establish and navigate an appropriate care plan
💬 A centre that helps with referrals for specialized women-centered care
💬 Routine comprehensive wellness assessments to help women and care providers establish and navigate an appropriate care plan
💬 A centre that helps with referrals for specialized women-centered care
ACTIVITY EXAMPLE: CORE HEALTHCARE TEAM
In the first workshop we met with local Vancouver women. Our team divided the attendees into smaller groups, and gave the women cards with healthcare professions on them. The participants were asked to individually add their thoughts around the pros and cons of each professional to the cards.
We then facilitated a discussion with the women in each small group about the healthcare professions, which offered the opportunity to both hear about healthcare roles they may not know much about and to offer insights about the ones they do.
Each woman received three blue dots to be placed on the cards. The blue dots were to identify a healthcare professional each woman wanted to have as part of her core healthcare team.
In the second series of workshops, we met with healthcare professionals. The outcomes from the sessions with the women were displayed around the room, and we started the workshop with a 'gallery viewing' of the annotated outcomes.
