Leveraging Human-Centered Design in Chronic Disease Prevention

Bridging the knowing-doing gap in the prevention of chronic disease requires deep appreciation and understanding of the complexities inherent in behavioral change. Strategies that have relied exclusively on the implementation of evidence-based data have not yielded the desired progress. The tools of human-centered design, used in conjunction with evidence-based data, hold much promise in providing an optimal approach for advancing disease prevention efforts. Directing the focus toward wide-scale education and application of human-centered design techniques among health-care professionals will rapidly multiply their effective ability to bring the kind of substantial results in disease prevention that have eluded the healthcare industry for decades. This, in turn, would increase the likelihood of prevention by design. (C) 2015 American Journal of Preventive Medicine