Emphasizing a human-centered design approach to prevent and reduce infant mortality across Indiana through education and design
PRIME
How might we use decrease infant mortality in the state of Indiana using educational technology?
Preventing and Reducing Infant Mortality through Education (PRIME) is a virtual toolkit that includes a website, a professional infographic video, and a social media campaign built for the community, medical professionals, and governmental stakeholders. To accomplish this project, the team partnered with the College of Health at Ball State University and the Health Coalition of Delaware County
Infant mortality serves as a reflection of health in a population – figuratively, a canary in a coal mine. Indiana ranks 45th in the nation for rates of infant mortality in a country that ranks 167th in the world. The rate among the Black population in Indiana is higher than other racial and ethnic groups, and a large proportion of infant deaths can be linked to preventable, but often ignored, causes. To address these issues, this project uses a human-centered design approach to create culturally-inclusive communication recommendations to prevent and reduce infant mortality through education (PRIME).
The website is game-based and encourages users to learn about sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) and methods to prevent it. It incorporates elements of gamification, which encourage interaction with the material and provide an opportunity for players to win points for rewards provided by the project partners. The website is also mobile-friendly and could be adapted into a native app in the future.
For the infographic video, the team’s academic partner conducted focus group interviews to gain the perspective of the target audience. The two-minute long infographic video, created by Digital Corps and based on the academic partner’s research, was distributed to community and health care partners.
Our Team.
“During the PRIME project, our group put theories we learned from our classes into action. We realized the power of applying these theories to create prototypes of potential solutions, which moved the project past unforeseen obstacles and delivered a meaningful result to our partners. It was a powerful experience to apply classroom knowledge to real-world problems before graduation! .”
Key Stats.
- 75% of medical and community members of Indiana have access to the PRIME Toolkit.
Our Partner.
The College of Health at Ball State University was established in 2016, providing students with an innovative environment of various health-related disciplines.
The Health Coalition of Delaware County provides citizens of Delaware County with quality health services. They strive to enrich the lives of ethnic minorities throughout the state of Indiana.