Community Design for Health and Wellness (CDHW)

This interdisciplinary research group (CDHW-IRG) seeks applications for seed funding for multi-disciplinary research partnerships that are creating innovative, sustainable solutions to community-defined challenges for achieving health and wellness at the intersection of upstream health determinants (i.e., policy, social-physical environment, health behaviors, biological/genetic, health systems) including the emerging landscape of information, media, and communication.

The CDHW intends to provide seed funding for about 10-15 pilot projects in amounts ranging from $3,000 – $25,000. Successful proposals will align with CDHW aims in three different ways: (1) content area; (2) research team composition; (3) research process.

The framework for the CDHW-IRG includes the following parts described below: (1) Motivation and focus of CDHW-IRG; (2) Overall approach of the CDHW-IRG; (3) Aims for funded projects; (4) Examples of the variety of projects sought by the CDHW-IRG; (5) Timeline for applications and research projects; (6) CDHW Sponsors.

The application process begins with a brief Letter of Intent/Letter of Interest due October 1, 2018 (full time line provided below).

See Application and Review Process Information for specific guidelines and conditions. Send inquiries to Sarah Allred or Mark Aakhus.

CDHW’s Motivation and Focus

Achieving sustainable health and wellness for communities and individuals requires addressing the determinants of health for communities and individuals: social-physical-economic environment, behaviors, health services, biology and genetics, and public policy.

At the same time, technical advances for determining what is known and actionable regarding health and wellness, from omics to information and communication technology, are disrupting practices of treatment, prevention, and engagement across communities and health systems. These technical advances create possibilities for radically tailoring health interventions to individuals, populations, and communities while generating new sources of data and techniques for aggregation and interpretation. These technical advances also create new risks for individuals and communities that require careful attention.

The emerging landscape calls for critical, creative engagement across communities and health systems to invent and reinvent information and communication practices in treatment and prevention to address the determinants of health and wellness in effective, systemic, and legitimate ways.

Overall Approach

A key societal challenge lies in creating practices that solve problems in a valid way. Academia commonly employs a theory-application approach where experts define and frame the problems that need to be solved. This IRG explores how, and when, research problems can instead be defined more pragmatically, especially by the people whose lives are practically impacted by the problems. Thus, the IRG’s approach is to support projects that explore the process of designing and building solutions to community-defined problems in the emerging landscape for health and wellness.

The IRG aims to evaluate the validity of the first three parts of the following research process so that supported projects can build a sustainable way forward to achieve the remaining parts:

Identification of a population-specific problem in health and wellness by a community;
Formation of a team with community and academic partners to characterize the problem and what would count as a solution;
Iterative, collaborative process of solution-design that leverages the community partners’ knowledge of the community and the problem and the researchers’ academic resources;
Evaluation of the solution in the specific population;
Generalization of the solution to other related problems in the same population or to the same problem in related populations.

Aims for Funding

Seed funding from the IRG is intended to catalyze specific projects organized around the motivation, focus, and approach of CDHW. The success of supported projects will be judged by the achievement of: (1) the development of a sustainable relationship among and between academic and community partners; (2) a well-articulated, community defined problem in health or upstream determinant of health; (3) a co-designed solution to the problem; (4) implementation of the solution to the extent necessary to demonstrate proof-of-concept and to support applications for additional funding; (5) communication of process, problems, and solutions to the rest of the IRG team. Proposals for projects will demonstrate a concept and plan that can achieve these outcomes.

We encourage applications from, or that involve, academics who might not think of themselves as traditional health researchers, but who have either content expertise in areas considered upstream determinants of health (e.g. crime, transportation, education, built environment, social relationships, public policy, decision-making) or technical expertise that would be useful in problem-solving (e.g. big-data analysis, web-design, app design, GIS mapping, graphic design).

Illustrative Examples of Fundable Projects

Below, several potential projects illustrate the breadth of content and research team composition.

Example: Access to Healthy Food

The only grocery store in a municipality in Cumberland County recently closed. Several community groups working together want to know what the community can do to attract a grocery store. An interdisciplinary team of faculty with expertise in economics, community organization/development, design partner with the community groups to determine what information is needed to answer the question. They then establish a process for gathering the needed information from relevant stakeholders in a way that could generalize to other communities with the same problem. Content relevance: Lack of access to healthy food is identified as an obstacle to health in many communities. Team relevance: A community group is working with an interdisciplinary team. Process relevance: The team is working to solve an existing, community-defined problem in a generalizable way.

Example: Effects of Transportation on Health Care

In sparsely populated areas in Southern New Jersey, individuals involved in community health report that patients who have insurance are nonetheless failing to manage their chronic health conditions and end up in the emergency room. Data suggests one reason is that patients lack transportation to routine medical appointments. The community group partners with faculty in computer science, experts in social media and health, and operations management to explore design-oriented potential solutions, such as a health services oriented ride-sharing app that interfaces with health network scheduling services, a cost-benefit analysis of additional public transportation in affected regions, or how to mine publically available data to provide solutions to this problem.

Example: Community-Clinic Connections

A clinical team is interested in understanding environmental exposures that patients have experienced to improve diagnosis and treatment of illness in the clinic and to contribute to the science about the disease while working with patients and communities to develop strategies and technologies that address the environmental exposures. The collaborative opportunity could bring together the patient community, patients’ local communities, and the clinic with specialists in the focal disease, environmental health, citizen science, and community informatics.

Example: Informaton Overload and Fake Health News

A patient-caregiver stakeholder group from a central New Jersey clinic has raised the problems they have with public, internet based information and the proliferation of advice services based on mail-in genetic testing as well as other medical services and other kinds of targeted marketing of medical products related to their illness, its treatment, and making sense of how to achieve wellness despite their illness. The clinicians are frustrated regarding what to do to best address information overload. Competing Community health clinics, nursing home healthworkers, and clinical practitioners have each recognized the concerns of the community but are in need of a unified plan to maximize community health and wellness.

Example: Engagement of Community Resources to Address Opiate Addiction

There is an epidemic of opiate addiction that is affecting every community in New Jersey. There are many upstream contributors and downstream effects of addiction impacting individual/community health and wellness. Development of a community-based information network that engages stakeholders in an effective way that educates, informs and assists the addicted individual would be a suitable area of investigation. Stakeholders would need to be identified; community leaders engaged; resources identified; and academic leaders with technical expertise in communication could participate to develop tools that would be iteratively tested to optimize application in community outreach. The basic strategy might be applicable in other defined community-health applications such as HIV, diabetes, or blood pressure control; or more broadly regarding health care engagement (e.g. screening and prevention).

Timeline

The following table lists the CDHW-IRG timeline

Aug 1, 2018	Release Request for Letters of Intent (LOI)
Oct 1, 2018	LOI Due
Oct 1, 2018 - Nov 15, 2018	Review of LOIs
Nov 15, 2018	LOI Reviews Returned with decision regarding invitation for full application and recommendations.
Jan 31, 2019	Invited Full Proposals Due
Feb 2019	Full Proposal Reviews
Mar 1, 2019	Release Funding Decisions
Mar 31, 2019	Community Design for Health and Wellness Kickoff Meeting. All funded parties required to participate.
May 1, 2019	Updated Project Plans Due.
Fall 2019 (Late Oct / Early Nov)	CDHW Checkpoint Meeting for all funded parties. All funded parties required to participate.
Spring 2020	CDHW Checkpoint meeting for all funded parties. Reports on preliminary results due.
Spring 2021 (Feb)	CDHW Checkpoint meeting for all funded parties. Reports on preliminary results due.