BU Research Blog

Last week colleagues from our Sonamoni project co-hosted a workshop with TGI Australia (The George Institute for Global Health) at the 15th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion (Safety 2024) which was held in New Delhi (India).  Focusing on the strengths of the Human-Centred Design (HCD) approach, this workshop first introduced the design principles to participants and demonstrated how they can be employed to reduce risks and prevent accidents. These design principles have been applied for many years in designing consumer products and, more recently, in the fields of health and social systems.

In this well-attended workshop researchers presented case studies from Bangladesh (including the Sonamoni project) and Tanzania to illustrate how the process is employed with communities to co-develop interventions aimed at reducing the risk of drowning among fishing folk and vulnerable children.  The team proposed a framework which integrates HCD methodology and traditional research methodologies, creating a more user-centred and multidimensional approach to intervention design. Outputs of the process included user risk journeys, stakeholder mapping and systems diagrams that can be used with communities and wider stakeholders to visualise the problem and bring to life the environment in which interventions are to be designed. These outputs can also be support advocacy and donor engagement.

The proposed framework provides a mechanism for closer collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and communities to work together to co-design context-specific solutions that are culturally and environmentally appropriate. Workshop participants were asked for their expert opinion on the proposed framework, to help us refine the framework and inform future practice.

Our Sonamoni project recently had its own video recording on YouTube.  Sonamoni is a public health project is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through its Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme. For more information, visit the NIHR website.  Sonamoni is coordinated by Bournemouth University in collaboration with Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB), the University of the West of England, Bristol, the University of Southampton, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), and design Without Borders (DWB) Africa.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health