Relief for Dallas Health & Human Services Dept.

Project Overview

Design Research and Strategy

I created seven research guides to deliver a set of full-service design strategy tools for Dallas County Health and Human Services (HHS).

Goals: Support refugee medical onboarding, engage support systems, and align localized non-profits.

The results showed that caseworkers are the most critical to medical engagement, yet medical records, training, and community resources can alleviate the load for all.

Outcomes:

  • County Training Documents

  • Client and User Product Flow

  • Dallas County Engagement Plan

Roles

Design Lead and Project Manager

Responsibilities

Team lead, survey creation/delivery

Time

4 Months

Industry

Healthcare and Social Work

Partners

Dallas County - Refugee Health Services, International Rescue Committee

The Process

  • Background Research

    Research on public health and current resources offered to partners and more

  • Surveys & Interviews

    Research guides for the partners to engage and serve patients

  • Workshop & Market Research

    I engaged stakeholders in research to gauge pain-points and gaps in services

  • Prototype & Next Steps

    I developed a set of recommendations for the county and how to scale the product

Background Research

I attempted to understand and evaluate patient needs in Refugee medical resettlement processing.

  • Engaging with public health and families led me to consider three of the 7 components of Whole Health

    1. Community

    2. Physical

    3. Self-Care

  • Family onboarding means caring from a legal and medical perspective as shown within US Resettlement Documentation

    • Screening

    • Arrival

    • Resettlement

Structured evaluation of patient needs was started by an observation of health systems, resettlement services, and contemporary issues with general medical visits.

I focused on three components of whole health, specific to refugees and their needs.

Surveys and Interviews

Via observation of current appointment scheduling, patient use of transit systems, resettlement services, and some medical visits by refugees, I refined research plans and started gathering features.

  • I sought to test out the following topics via this experiment

    • Patient Communication Gauge

    • Modality and Messaging

  • This interview sought out to explain the following:

    • Patient Appt. Scheduling Process

    • Scheduling Modality and Effectiveness

Initial Insights:

  • Patients prefer family-oriented appointments

  • Services outside of health can feel rushed or impersonal

  • Refugees tend to have inconsistent awareness of services

After interviewing caseworkers, clinic managers, and new/current patients I found the need to host a workshop to align perspectives and priorities.

Workshop and Market Research

The workshop helped stakeholders identify common goals, issues, and potential improvements between their organizations.

Goals:

  • Align resettlement agencies and medical orgs

  • Re-define common goals in resettlement

  • Establish new arrivals into their community

Partners in Progress

Outcomes:

  • Features on community resources available to clients and caseworker networks in the area

  • Re-defined caseworker/patient tasks in the resettlement process

caseworker user flow-chart of Relief app

Paper Prototype:

Initial caseworker training workflow for the Relief mobile app

Initial caseworker mobile/web wireframes for Relief training module

caseworker training relief wireframe

Mobile wireframe for caseworkers in the Relief platform

Prototype and Next Steps

Caseworker Training

Re-establishing case worker training into a centralized platform for different organizations involved in resettlement managed by each respective governing body

New Client Documents

I gave a walkthrough to some caseworkers and medical providers in the organizations

    • Care Network Engagement

    • Client, Provider, and Caseworker Portals

    • Medical and Support Onboarding for refugees/resettled populations

What I learned

  • Building a vision of research and collective mission is inmesuarably valuable with teams that are new to design strategy

    Leadership and Support

  • Group research should prioritize consistency, worksheets, and the ability to iterate on relevant data gathering

    Data Capture Tools

  • Brining together external partners always requires extra time, planning, and a shared value proposition

    Partner Engagement