The Center for the Urban Child and Healthy Family and Pediatrics Primary Care are leading efforts to build the Pediatric Practice of the Future through fundamental systems change—creating and scaling novel health delivery approaches, and working with families, inter-disciplinary colleagues, communities and other family-serving sectors. The goal is to create the practice of the future that:
- empowers families to define their health priorities and design their own care;
- provides care to the family;
- provides new opportunities to promote social and emotional child health;
- develops deeper community partnerships;
- leverages technology to provide flexible care options and facilitate communication; and
- rethinks the composition and roles of care team members.
One of the core tenants of the Center’s work, is the belief that fundamental care redesign can only take place if families co-create solutions. As such, the Center have decided to undergo a Human Centered Design process in order to deeply understand what our families expect and hope for from their health care. Human Centered Design is a generative, people-centered set of methods creating an approach to problem-solving that: honors the people this practice seeks to serve; engages families, stakeholder, and partners actively in the design process; and presumes discovering together new models, services, experiences and tools falling outside the bounds of today’s standard practice.
The Center is excited to announce a new partnership with Agncy—a local firm specializing Human Centered Design—to conduct deep ethnographic work with families from the Boston Medical Center pediatrics. Agncy uses design methods to reduce structural inequalities and generate actionable solutions to complex systems issues. They have worked closely with Boston Public Schools to support Central Office redesign efforts, and the Center looks forward to bringing them onboard in 2019.