UC Berkeley

Key Messages

Design as a practice is well placed to address the need to innovate faster, improve collaboration, and scale solutions while considering the way people live their daily lives across the world.

Design for Health views design as a craft and a discipline that applies a specific mindset and skillset to a creative problem-solving process.

The unique value of design in global health can be understood through 3 advantages: framing—identifying the right problems to solve; intention—creating space to solve problems the right way; and collaboration—continually engaging communities and organizations as actual partners.

A comparison of design to other common problem-solving approaches in global health illustrates key differences but also offers opportunities to integrate design with approaches such as participatory research, quality improvement, and sociobehavioral research.

To tackle complex challenges like the ones global health faces, there is a need for public health products, programs, and interventions to better meet the needs of communities. In the toolbox of approaches to global health innovation, design is essential.