Youth-driven design workshop at the 2021 SAHM Annual Meeting
March 15, 2021: While youth engagement is on the tip of everyone’s tongue, adolescent health practitioners and policymakers are often not equipped with the tools and techniques to build meaningful youth engagement into their projects from front to back. But it doesn’t have to be this way!
In March, YLabs led a workshop at the 2021 SAHM Annual Meeting to introduce participants to the principles and practice of youth-driven design for adolescent health programming.
Recording of the workshop, Design with Youth, for Youth: Using youth-driven design to co-design health programming with young people, coming soon!
“People have great ideas to serve youth, they just need to involve youth in the process to make those ideas stick. Young people know what works best for them, as would any group that is meant to benefit from health programming.”
Youth-driven design is based on a human-centered design (HCD) methodology adapted to meet the needs of young people and engage them intensively, equitably, and sensitively in the co-design process, including on taboo or stigmatized topics. It is intentionally multidisciplinary in nature and people with diverse backgrounds and experiences are encouraged to attend, especially young people leading change in their communities. In this workshop, our team used real-world case studies with a focus on public health practice to show various ways HCD has been employed in public health products, communications, services, organizational strategies, and business models.
Workshop learning objectives:
Practice design research methods and apply appropriate frameworks to understand young people's needs in health programming as well as equitably and sensitively engage youth in co-design processes.
Apply insights to uncover opportunities for interventions to improve young people's health.
Discuss case studies and examples of how to prototype and refine health innovations with young people.
Executive Director Rebecca Hope, MBCHB, MPH, and Senior Behavioral Scientist Shola Olabode-Dada, PhD led this session.
