Grounding Health Research in Design Thinking for Equitable Engagement to Address COVID-19 (Grid Engagement)

Racial disparities and social determinants shape health inequality in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacts vulnerable groups, particularly minority populations, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and those unable to practice physical distancing. Those most likely to be impacted, such as African Americans with chronic health conditions, are excluded or underrepresented in research, both as participants and researchers. Groups that have been historically excluded or underrepresented must be included in research prioritization. The project team proposes equity-centered design thinking (DT) to equip stakeholders with capabilities and mindsets for research agenda setting in relation to PCOR/CER related to COVID-19. Design thinking is a human-centered approach that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, parameters of possibility, and requirements for success. Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular, is an important environment in which to conduct this study given the high burden of the pandemic, African-American population, and distinct demographic characteristics relative to other parts of the country (higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity). The team aims to co-create with stakeholders an equity-focused, human-centered design process to understand the needs and values of underrepresented stakeholders around PCOR/CER research and consequently produce an equity-centered DT toolkit that may be used by these communities to improve engagement in research prioritization. The project will build an advisory core of patient community members, drawn from groups underrepresented in research including minorities, formerly incarcerated people, and women, who will engage in equity-centered DT activities and a research prioritization process. Partners will engage in co-design of an exercise to identify high-priority research issues and questions, with ethical considerations, for PCOR/CER related to COVID-19. The team will assess and evaluate the experiences of stakeholders around the process and incorporate learning from the evaluation to produce a set of tools appropriate to the needs of underrepresented communities for research agenda setting.