Rosenverse
Increasing Health Equity and Improving the Service Experience for Under-Served Latine Communities in Arizona

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Increasing Health Equity and Improving the Service Experience for Under-Served Latine Communities in Arizona

Gold
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Share the love for this talk
Increasing Health Equity and Improving the Service Experience for Under-Served Latine Communities in Arizona
Speakers: Alexia Cohen and Adriane Ackerman
Link:

Summary

In response to the existing health equity gap for communities of color, which the pandemic exacerbated, this collaboration tackled the challenge of increasing COVID-19 vaccination rates and improving health equity among Latina/x/o individuals of childbearing age in southern Arizona. Partnering with the local health department and a diverse Community of Practice, our team employed a Human-Centered Design approach to co-create and pilot solutions that address critical health needs and strengthen patient-practitioner trust. Our year-long design process led to the successful implementation of a community and a clinical pilot that enhanced healthcare navigation and engagement for our primary users, with early outcomes showing positive impacts on the local healthcare system. This experience underscores the power of creating space for cross-disciplinary collaboration and offers valuable insights into integrating equity-focused practices within service design. Attendees will learn about the effectiveness of coalition-based approaches and strategies for broadening service design practices to address complex health equity issues affecting diverse, low income communities.

Key Insights

  • Centering equity requires compensating community members fairly, overcoming institutional red tape and tax eligibility concerns.

  • A deeply engaged Community of Practice (COP) including trusted local organizations accelerates trust and relevance in health projects.

  • Human-centered design phases benefit from low-fidelity prototypes and storyboards to empower meaningful community feedback.

  • Involving community partners in decision-making from problem definition to piloting deepens participation and ownership.

  • Bringing jargon-free language and clear timelines helps non-designers navigate the ambiguity inherent in human-centered design.

  • Pilots integrated authentic health promotora workers from the Latina community to improve patient engagement and follow-up.

  • Dual pilots addressed clinical workflow improvements and community healthcare navigation challenges separately but complementarily.

  • Sustained organizational change included embedding health promotion roles permanently and expanding HCD training programs locally.

  • Flexible innovation must be balanced with realistic expectations about partner capacity to avoid overburdening small organizations.

  • Measuring impact combined qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys administered by trusted community health workers.

Notable Quotes

"We decided with the COP to view our budget as a moral document."

"Community-centered design allowed us to uplift the value of lived experience and embed it directly into budgeting."

"The COP became the beating heart of our project, enabling quick credibility and community excitement."

"The more participatory the practices, the deeper and more intentional the engagement needs to be."

"We actively reduced jargon to make our process accessible for non-designers."

"Prototypes were very low fidelity because too-high fidelity can intimidate participants and hinder feedback."

"Relinquishing control over implementation empowered community-driven solutions and fostered lasting trust."

"We aimed for a fifth grade reading level to make materials accessible."

"Hiring team members with lived experience was key for authentic engagement and facilitating workshops."

"Federal funding does not provide food for participants, so we had to plan accordingly to make participation irresistible."

Ask the Rosenbot
Doug Powell
DesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Kristin Skinner
Theme 1 Intro
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Chris Moses
Stretching the Definition of DesignOps with Product Development
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Farid Sabitov
Theme Four Intro
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Craig Brookes
"Just Make it Look Good" and Other Ways We're Misunderstood
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Jose Coronado
From Zero to Hero
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Matt Webb
Context Window: Five Futures for AI
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Theme 2 Intro
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Lada Gorlenko
Theme 1: Intro
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Laurent Christoph
Scale the impact of DesignOps in 3D: Diligence, Decision, Discipline
2025 • DesignOps Community
Craig Villamor
Design Systems for Ethical Design
2023 • Enterprise Community
Kristin Skinner
8 Types of Measures in Design Operations
2020 • DesignOps Community
Michaela Mora
Advanced Concept Testing Approaches To Guide Product Development and Business Decisions
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Dana Chisnell
The Sensemaking Business
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Eduardo Ortiz
Day 3 Theme Panel
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Deanna Zandt
The Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care” with Deanna Zandt
2022 • Civic Design Community

More Videos

Sofía Delsordo

"Pat Helisco funds projects that have social impact and provides designers space to exhibit and connect with stakeholders."

Sofía Delsordo Kassim Vera

Public Policy for Jalisco's Designers to Make Design Matter

December 8, 2021

"If it’s not usable it’s not valuable."

Product and Design at Bloomberg: A 15-year Evolution

December 6, 2022

Liza Pemstein

"We don’t have dedicated user researchers, but designers and PMs conduct most research here."

Liza Pemstein Jane Davis

Scaling Research Via an Ops First Model at Clever

March 27, 2023

Kara Kane

"Openly sharing stories helps us learn from those who came before us and carve new paths."

Kara Kane

Theme One Intro

November 16, 2022

Mark Interrante

"Using a playbook helps codify domain knowledge and prioritization criteria for AI to apply."

Mark Interrante Harry Max

AI for Prioritization (3rd of 3 seminars)

July 11, 2024

Sam Proulx

"If you build accessible shopping with these four keys, compliance with legal standards like WCAG will naturally fall into place."

Sam Proulx

Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience

October 3, 2023

Rich Mironov

"Assume good intent, start with empathy — we’re all doing hard things we can't do well alone."

Rich Mironov

How Can Product Managers and UXers Help Each Other (and Why are Product Folks so Annoying Sometimes)?

December 6, 2022

Juhan Sonin

"Nobody asked for this damn thing, nobody funded it, but we just made it."

Juhan Sonin

Design Now! The Agenda for Action

September 4, 2025

Mansi Gupta

"I’m dreaming of a world where women-centricity is so ingrained that frameworks like this don’t need to exist anymore."

Mansi Gupta

Drawing from Feminist Practice to Make Inclusive Design Operational

September 9, 2022