Students investigate healthcare challenges affecting vulnerable populations and design evidence-based solutions that improve safety, access to care, and health outcomes. Working with healthcare professionals, patient advocates, community organizations, and higher education partners, they use research, interviews, data analysis, and design thinking to understand patient needs and test feasible ideas. The experience builds scientific reasoning, empathy, ethical decision-making, cultural awareness, collaboration, and professional communication as students act as healthcare innovators and advocates. By preparing work for public presentation and critique, students connect classroom learning to real community needs and develop a stronger sense of responsibility to health equity and patient well-being.

Students will analyze a healthcare challenge affecting a vulnerable population, define clear criteria and constraints, and design a feasible solution using evidence, stakeholder input, and design-thinking processes. They will conduct community-based research through interviews, surveys, and data analysis, then evaluate trade-offs related to cost, safety, access, reliability, and cultural relevance. Students will apply healthcare ethics, patient advocacy, social determinants of health, and anatomy and physiology concepts to explain the problem and justify their decisions. They will collaborate with peers and community partners to revise prototypes or proposals, communicate their ideas through professional products and presentations, and reflect on their growth in empathy, problem solving, leadership, and collaboration.

Students will produce empathy interview notes, survey tools, data charts, problem statements, and criteria-and-constraints matrices as they investigate a healthcare challenge affecting a vulnerable population. Teams will create annotated research briefs, anatomy and physiology explainers, stakeholder personas, and early sketches, storyboards, or digital mockups to show how their solution responds to patient needs, safety, access, ethics, and feasibility. By the end of the project, they will present a polished solution package that may include a prototype, app wireframe, patient advocacy resource, community health campaign, telehealth support plan, or accessibility improvement proposal, supported by a research report, cost-benefit analysis, and revision log. For the Healthcare Innovation Expo, students will also prepare professional slide decks, display boards, and short pitches for healthcare partners, families, and community members.

Open with a “Patient Journey Challenge” in which teams rotate through short case stations based on real barriers faced by vulnerable patients, such as language access, medication confusion, fall risk, missed telehealth appointments, or caregiver stress. At each station, students examine artifacts like discharge instructions, mock health data, community maps, and patient quotes, then identify the core problem, affected body systems, and possible safety or equity concerns. Follow with a live or virtual panel featuring a nurse, therapist, patient advocate, or public health partner from a local clinic, hospital, college program, or community organization who responds to students’ initial observations and adds real-world context. Close the launch with teams drafting a “need statement” and one early solution idea they will revisit throughout critique, research, reflection, and prototype development.

Host a Healthcare Innovation Expo where teams present their research, prototypes, advocacy tools, and solution pitches to healthcare professionals, community partners, families, and peers. Structure the event like a public poster session and demo day, with judges from local clinics, hospitals, colleges, and community organizations who give feedback on feasibility, ethics, patient impact, and equity. Include short presentation rounds, prototype demonstrations, and a community choice voting element so students practice professional communication and receive authentic recognition for their work. Close with a reflection gallery or video booth where students share how their thinking changed about patient advocacy, health disparities, collaboration, and innovation.