What if, instead of going to a doctor and only receiving a prescription for medication, you could receive a prescription for fundamental resources directly associated with long-term health: housing, food, etc.? What if the healthcare system looked at your health holistically, rather than just managing your disease? 

Medical literature consistently reaffirms the direct relationship between poverty and poor health, including developmental delay, learning disabilities, heart disease, and hospitalization. And yet, clinics and hospitals do not yet consistently address these major social determinants of health in their assessment and prescription methods. Health Leads, a Boston-based healthcare organization, is working across the United States to achieve just that: addressing resource gaps directly in their partner clinics. 

We are thrilled to be spending the remainder of 2014 designing alongside Health Leads and their partners—volunteers, hospitals, doctors, and patients—to build a high-quality service model that bridges the gap between clinics, patients, and community resources. Health Leads already has some partnerships with hospitals around the country, and we think their model can be even more dynamic by better incorporating the needs of the patients themselves in its design and adaptations. 

Over the next two months, our IDEO.org team will bring (you guessed it!) a human-centered design approach to the challenges of quality patient service as Health Leads scales. During our initial two weeks of field research, we’ve done observations on the ground in clinics and conducted a broad range of interviews. Now, we’re taking those learnings and jumping into concepting and prototyping to design a more patient-focused model of operation. We believe this type of model could allow the healthcare system as a whole to more directly address the underlying health needs most desired by low-income patients.