Design + Nursing: Innovation in Community Health

While the United Sates provides a very high standard of care in acute settings, we lag far behind other nations in community health. To address this discrepancy the University of Cincinnati Colleges of Nursing, Business, and the Industrial Design Program, have developed a unique collaboration. This collaboration “Design + Nursing: Innovation in Healthcare” focuses on grass roots problem solving in the area of community health. The collaboration is embedded in a community health nursing population based practicum. While unconventional from the outside, this mix of nurses, designers, business students and community advisers demonstrate how three unrelated disciplines can pool their problem solving techniques and put users at the center and community health at the top of the pyramid. The presentation will outline the collaboration's past three years, and how innovative courses in the curriculum can be developed to meet a range of interdisciplinary students learning needs within a community based focus.