ICL Communication Design
ICL: Healthcare Innovation
How might we…
Demonstrate the innovative, whole-health approach of a healthcare provider while also addressing disconnects that exist between frontline staff and upper-level management?
Description:
A communications design project for the Healthcare Innovations team at the Institute for Community Living (ICL). This project was completed as part of a group for my master’s program in Design for Social Innovation.
Role
Design Research, Photographer, Storytelling, and Communications strategy
Solution:
Through appealing internal messaging to all of ICL staff, my team and I reframed values upper level staff prioritized into actionable practices while carefully crafting messaging that also showed an appreciation for the work of front line staff.
Introduction and Project Brief
The Institute for Community Living (ICL) is a healthcare agency that helps people address emotional, mental health, and developmental disability challenges so that they can live independently and contribute to their community. From January through May of 2018, my team and I partnered with their Healthcare Innovations team to help support internal communication strategies as they strived to bring more focus on their whole-health initiative.
Data has shown us that people with serious mental illness die 15-20 years earlier than the rest of the population. This has alarmed the behavioral health field as they realize they are failing their patients and can no longer separate mental health from physical wellness. We joined ICL as they began leading this effort to instill a shift from thinking of themselves as behavioral health specialists to healthcare providers who address a client’s whole health.
Research
As a team, we wanted to further explore three main areas in our initial qualitative research:
1. Any potential communication gaps or barriers that may exist between frontline and upper-level management staff.
2. What the current mindsets and behaviors of ICL employees around this shift to a whole-health approach are, as well as their role in this shift
3. How ICL is currently communicating with their employees and how is this communication perceived by the employees.
Activities
After identifying our research interests and goals, we conducted the following activities:
1. Conducted a communications audit of ICL’s current communications and materials
2. Interviewed 62 staff members including 44 front-line staff, 10 executive level staff, and 8 program participants
3. Held regular meetings and check-in presentations with the team at ICL to present our insights and receive feedback throughout the process
Insights
We found that there was a disconnect between leadership at ICL headquarters and front-line staff working directly with patients in clinics and programs:
1. Leadership wanted to implement new values throughout the organization (called TRIP values - trauma-informed, recovery-oriented, integrated, and person-centered care - which represented addressing whole health). However, front-line staff felt like they are already incorporating these values into their work.
2. There were multiple different understandings of the TRIP values across the organization and a need for more clear and simple language.
3. Front-line staff felt under-valued and under-appreciated.
Communication Strategy
Based on our research and the insights we arrived at, we decided that our design concepts would need to address the following goals:
1. Reframe TRIP values (trauma-informed, recovery-oriented, integrated, and person-centered care) into actionable practices and ensure a shared understanding through the use of plain language, stories, and examples
2. Celebrate and appreciate the hard work of front-line staff
3. Put values into practice to improve physical, public spaces
We presented various design concepts to the ICL team, iterated on our ideas, and came up with the following 4 concepts to implement.
Inspiration Wall
We built interactive installations in clinic waiting rooms to put values into practice and inspire and motivate both staff and program participants.
Pull-Tab Posters
We created pull-tab posters to display in staff meeting rooms and break rooms asking employees to “take what they need” and providing words of encouragement and appreciation to recognize the hard work they do.
Values Posters
We designed 4 large-scale posters to be displayed in clinic lobbies, waiting rooms, and at the main ICL office. Each poster highlighted a TRIP value and provided an image example of a staff member successfully implementing that value to care for a patient’s whole health. All photos were taken by myself as another way to celebrate the hard work of ICL frontline staff.
Touchstone Cards
We designed touchstone cards with simple reminders and concrete ways for staff to practice TRIP values.
