Still, public health is faced with persistent and seemingly intractable problems – problems often rooted in incomplete and fast changing information about people’s unique behavior and aspirations within extremely complex contexts. Public health’s traditional reliance on scientific analysis, evidence-based solutions, and need for measurable impact, without considering the complexities of human behavior and the perpetual transformations of individuals and communities, has hobbled research and limited the effectiveness of interventions. 

Design offers public health urgently needed frameworks that align with people’s unique realities and harmonize with intangible values to help organizations solve specific challenges in people’s lives. These frameworks and methods have evolved, for the most part, in developing products, services, communications, environments and organizations that serve consumers. While initially intended for corporate projects, challenges in public health and well-being where there are more stakeholders, with greater diversity and uncertainty, and goals that are more difficult to measure. 

In these tough cases, the discipline of design provides a complementary approach to traditional public health research, implementation strategies, and education, offering methodologies for finding solutions with incomplete data is , responding quickly to shifting information, and maintaining progress within volatile environments.Successful and meaningful solutions can provide a base for new research that builds knowledge and contributes to public policy.

Design can offer the knowledge and perspective required to shift the focus from changing people to fit public health’s system, to one where we design our system to fit with people and the ways they live, work, learn, become sick, age, receive care and heal.