There are pressing public health challenges in Zambia: Over 1,000,000 Zambians have HIV/AIDS and there are 4,300,000 cases of Malaria in Zambia every year. USAID and Chemonics, through the Communications Support for Health (CSH) program, are leveraging the power of communication to improve public health outcomes across the country. CSH partnered with IDEO.org to design and deliver a capacity building workshop engaging participants and teaching them the best of what human-centered design has to offer to the field of behavior change communication.

Opportunities for Design 

In January of 2012, IDEO.org sent two designers to Lusaka, Zambia to conduct research and assess the state of public health, behavior change communications (BCC), and capacity building opportunities for BCC practitioners in Zambia. During the two weeks the IDEO.org team spent in Zambia, it became clear that there was a significant opportunity to infuse principles and practices of human-centered design into BCC practitioners’ approach to creating communications.

This insight led to the creation of the first ever Zambian Health + Design Summit in June 2012. A four-person team from IDEO.org returned to Zambia to facilitate the Summit, which lasted three days and brought participants through the complete design process - from field research to prototyping. Participants learned about and discussed design and then applied their learnings to a tangible design challenge: How might we design a communications campaign around alcohol abuse in Zambia?

What we Designed

The summit was attended by a diverse cross-section of professionals working at the intersection of health, design, development and behavior change communications. Participants ranged from BCC professionals from the Ministry of Health and the National AIDS Council to hip hop stars, actresses, and newscasters, fostering a creative environment and allowing participants to learn across disciplines.