Research and Development

We identify, design, and test new ways to advance racial health equity – and also explore existing concepts that are often overlooked.

The Challenge

Advancing racial health equity requires us to slow down, listen and work together with those most impacted by oppression. We work in partnership with organizations invested in their communities. Through this process, our prototypes reveal fresh insights and approaches. Together, our work remains forward-looking and focused on community-driven change.

Billions of dollars

have been invested in social health tech, but there is growing evidence of low adoption.

Critical barriers

include low community engagement and little to no design by community members.

Tools developed

by people with lived experience have a greater likelihood of creating meaningful change.

Our Approach

We use an innovation pipeline process to record our learnings and amplify best practices. From that we develop promising concepts. Then we take these concepts and build them into local prototypes with our community partners.

Our Projects

Investing in Community Innovators

We developed the inaugural “Makers Residency,” an incubator to fund and guide community leaders as they develop innovative solutions to inequities faced in their own communities.

Learn more about Makers Residency

Integrating Community Promoters Into Hospital Care Teams

We developed a new system of measurement to support the work of promotoras (Spanish-speaking community health members). With a more effective mechanism to assess institutional readiness, promotoras can better support the neighborhoods they serve.

Learn more about Para Los Niños

Designing New Ways to Assess Food Security

We are designing a new measure for food security that more accurately captures the creative and unseen ways communities feed themselves.

Learn more about our food security work

Empowering Caregivers to Shape Their Own Future

We designed, tested and now manage a digital ethnographic tool called Sensemaker. This innovative avenue to uplift caregiver voices will help us gain unique and vital insight about the caregiver experience.

Learn more about the Sensemaker Survey

Expanding Scope of Coverage for Medicaid Patients

We are analyzing data from a countywide Community Information Exchange to better understand what influences social determinants of health hardships among community members.

Coming soon: A “living archive” website to share the Research & Development team’s knowledge, process, insights and opportunities for collaboration.