Complexity in Health: Can Design Help Support Interdisciplinary Solutions?

Key Messages The collaborative nature of design practices is well-suited to creating the conditions for productively integrating varied disciplines to solve challenging problems in global health. The tensions that can arise from merging different disciplines and approaches within public health and beyond, rather than hinder progress, can be surfaced for stronger solutions to emerge. We explore 3 productive tensions that result from integrating global health and design: 1.Integrating explicit and implicit knowledge 2.Challenging linearity with iteration 3.Enabling collective ownership of processes and solutions For these tensions to be productive, design and global health practitioners must do more to be open and adapt to the heritage of other disciplines; both those that have always played a role in global health and those that are just beginning to garner attention in the field. Designers can do more to establish early that they are not there to replace but rather to “accompany” other disciplines through collaboration.