Notes From the Field: Diverse Partner Perspectives Improve the Usability and Equity Focus of Implementation Guides

Ethn Dis. 2024 Apr 24;DECIPHeR(Spec Issue):132-134. doi: 10.18865/ed.DECIPHeR.132. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Abstract

Context: School-based asthma programs (SBAPs) have improved health and educational disparities among youth with asthma.

Design: To support scaling out effective SBAPs, our school partners identified a need for online implementation guides that are "always available," to meet the needs of school nurses' demanding schedules. School nurses play a key role in the adoption and implementation of SBAPs, so it is important to ensure the implementation guide would be highly usable and acceptable to them.

Objective: Accordingly, our research team collaborated with human-centered design experts to identify the "user journeys" of school nurses and co-created our online implementation guide as a public-facing website with input from local and national school nurse partners.

Main results: In this perspectives article, our school nurse implementation partners and human-centered design experts reflect on challenges overcome in this process of developing a tailored implementation guide to school nurses and offer lessons from the field to others seeking to co-create implementation guides with community partners.

Keywords: Asthma; Health Inequities; Implementation Science; Pediatrics; User-Centered Design.

MeSH terms

  • Asthma* / therapy
  • Humans
  • School Health Services / organization & administration
  • School Nursing* / organization & administration