From Social Innovation in Health Initiative Philippines
The UP NIH Program on Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Health (SIHI Philippines) facilitated a three-day workshop on human centered design (HCD) for social innovations in health on September 3 to 5, 2024 at the Privato Hotel, Ortigas. The event, hosted by CBM Global Disability Inclusion Philippines (CBMG), was designed to help equip project teams and partners with knowledge, tools, and resources related to HCD that they can use for the implementation of their upcoming projects: iStrength, which supports selected local government units to improve their eye care service delivery systems, and Rise and Thrive, which aims to build resilient communities through inclusive mental health. The latter is a regional program supported by the Australian Government through its Partnerships for a Healthy Region initiative.
Participants included key representatives from CBMG and their project partners: Resources for the Blind, Inc., Eye Hear Foundation, Balik Kalipay Center for Psychosocial Response Inc., National Committee on Sight Preservation, and the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health Center for Research and Innovation. The workshop was led by Dr. Jana Mier-Alpaño, the Hub Manager of SIHI Philippines and co-facilitated by Dr. Jose Rene Cruz, Senior Research Associate of SIHI Philippines, and Dr. Pauline Tiangco, Technical Consultant for Network Sustainability of the SIHI Global Secretariat. It was an interactive and engaging workshop, utilizing a variety of HCD tools and methods.
The first day of the workshop was focused on operationalizing human-centered design, discussing the mindset of a human-centered designer, going through the process, and using HCD tools. The participants were engaged in a series of activities, which were geared towards learning directly from the people they are designing the initiative for, as they come to deeply understand their needs. This defines the first phase of the HCD process – Inspiration.
The second day of the workshop highlighted the Ideation phase, where participants learned to make sense of information they gathered in the previous phase, identify opportunities for design, and prototype possible solutions. Journey maps were developed by participants to help them better understand and empathize with the target end users (community members, patients, clients) of their initiatives. These were helpful in helping them synthesize and organize what they have learned from their respective research, immersion, or engagement with the community. They also identified and analyzed key touchpoints, end-user emotions and thoughts, and pain points and opportunities for improvement and innovation throughout the workshop. Social innovations in health, presented as cases, were also briefly discussed to serve as examples for the participants to emulate.
Implementation was the focus of the third day, where the community engagement self-monitoring strategy implemented among selected social innovations in health across rural and urban communities in the Philippines was discussed in detail by Dr. Tiangco. The lessons learned from these communities were highly appreciated by the participants, with some expressing their interest to introduce the same strategy to their respective communities. The day concluded with participants applying the principles and process of HCD in the implementation of their projects. Specifically through the recognition and understanding of the importance of meaningfully engaging with end users throughout problem definition, solution generation, monitoring, and evaluation, testing multiple iterations of proposed solutions in the real world, and utilizing inspiration, ideation, and implementation tools.
Ultimately, the workshop was successful in emphasizing deeply empathizing and learning from the people and applying the HCD approach in further developing project implementation plans. Keeping the “human perspective” by utilizing HCD principles and tools to understand diverse personas embedded in interconnected systems was one of the participants’ key takeaways.
About CBMG
CBMG is a development and humanitarian organization with a foundational focus on inclusion. It envisions an inclusive world in which all people with disabilities enjoy their human rights and achieve their full potential. Its different programs involve four core areas of work: Disability Inclusive Community Development, Inclusive Eye Health and Neglected Tropical Diseases, Community Mental Health, and Humanitarian Action. #
