Summary of Opportunity: As described in the recent Surgeon General's report, loneliness and isolation have profound negative health outcomes on par with smoking and obesity. Older adults are at particular risk.
Design Connections is a unique intervention that employs human-centered design tools— commonly used in industrial design and marketing—to decrease loneliness and increase resilience at the individual, group, and community levels. The program is modeled after the wellproven Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSPMP) framework employing four group sessions over a four-week period. The program empowers older adults to unlock their creativity by providing a structured, visual framework that encourages participants to examine their social connections by thinking like designers. Instead of offering ready-made solutions, the curriculum leverages design principles to co-create tailored strategies with participants. This approach cultivates self-reflection, invites self-actualization, and increases collaboration skills, ultimately nurturing a growth mindset.
A recent single site trial demonstrated significant the pilot led to a statistically significant increase in participants' sense of purpose and happiness, and a decrease in their loneliness. As a next step, the Design Connections development and research teams propose a multi-site trial with health systems that serve significant populations of low to moderate income older adults.
Benefits to participating organizations include staff training in design thinking methodologies which have broader utility in patient experience initiatives, improved patient outcomes, opportunities for publication/recognition, and potential integration with other value-based care initiatives.
Criteria for Participation: Health systems with well-developed age-friendly footprints and the bandwidth to build on that success. While this model is completely site neutral it would be great to run groups in community-based locations (clinics, community resource centers, etc.). It would be ideal to focus on systems that serve significant older adult populations, particularly those vulnerable, marginalized or low to moderate income. Participating organizations will need to provide a small amount of staff time to be trained and then lead sessions, as well as space for sessions to be held. Sessions are held once a week for a total of four weeks. Staff will also support intermittent survey data collection from participants from study participants over a 6- month period.
Support/Funding: Once potential partner system(s) are identified, the Design Connections team will work to develop foundation funding for the trial and evaluation costs.
Contact: If you are interested in this opportunity or learning more about it, please contact Ayse (Eye-shay) Birsel at [email protected]