Design better health solutions.
A 6-week training-and-mentoring journey for health leaders who want practical tools to prepare their teams, guide innovation, and design better health solutions.
Bring a real challenge from your organisation. Explore methods from human-centred design, systems innovation, design sprints, and responsible AI. With peers and mentors, you translate them into a context-specific innovation action plan.
- Applications close
- [Day, Date Month Year]
- Next cohort starts
- [Day, Date Month Year]
Does any of this sound familiar?
Your organisation knows innovation is needed, but nobody agrees on how to start.
Your organisation has designed programmes for communities who are not fully understood.
Research generates data, but not the insights that drive real decisions.
Promising ideas remain at pilot stage because ownership and scale were never planned from the start.
Your work cuts across services and systems, but engaging the right stakeholders remains a challenge.
You feel like AI could be relevant and supportive, but you don't know yet how to use it responsibly for innovating in the health space.
You are fully prepared to scope your new health programme with a clear innovation action plan:
- Clear innovation process
- Clear role for your team(s)
- Clear view which stakeholders to engage
- Practical research guides
- Design sprint facilitation guide
- AI support tools in place
This 6-week journey was built for exactly this.
Apply for the next cohortFrom innovation ambition to readiness for action
Before the 6-week journey
- Your organisation needs to innovate, but the process is unclear.
- Your challenge is broad or loosely defined.
- It's unclear who needs to be involved or how to engage them meaningfully.
- You've heard about HCD, design thinking, and AI, but aren't sure how to apply any of them.
- AI feels promising, but you're unsure how to use it ethically and well.
After the 6-week journey
- A focused challenge brief.
- A clear map of team members, partners, and stakeholders to involve.
- A discovery and stakeholder engagement plan.
- A design sprint and prototype testing plan.
- Confidence to use AI responsibly, without replacing ethics or lived experience.
- A practical innovation action plan that fits your organisational reality.
Learn methods to prepare yourself and your team to innovate
You don't need to arrive as an expert. The 6-week journey introduces these approaches in practical language and helps you apply them to your own challenge.
Human-centred design
Grounded in design thinking, behavioural science, and Social and Behavior Change (SBC), human-centred design helps teams understand people's needs, behaviours, motivations, and barriers before designing solutions.
Systems thinking
Understand the actors, relationships, incentives, and conditions that shape whether change can take hold.
Design sprint
Learn to plan and facilitate design sprints that move teams from insights to ideas, prototypes, and practical tests. Fast.
Ethical use of AI
Support research, synthesis, ideation, and planning, while human judgement, ethics, and lived experience stay central.
A custom innovation action plan, built around a real challenge in your organisation
Your custom innovation action plan
Not a generic template. A practical, context-specific plan shaped by your challenge, your team, your stakeholders, and the organisational reality you work in.
A focused challenge brief
A team, partner and stakeholder map
A discovery and stakeholder engagement plan
Research and learning questions
A design sprint and co-creation outline
A prototype and testing approach
A responsible AI support plan
An implementation roadmap with roles, risks and next decisions
Cohort members are not expected to implement in sync. Real implementation depends on each person's project timeline, team readiness, and organisational conditions. The goal is to prepare well, so you're ready when the right moment arrives.
Ready to build your innovation action plan?
Places are limited to keep Mentoring Circles focused, practical, and well-supported.
Apply for the next cohortKey dates
Week by week, you build a custom innovation action plan
Each week ends with a concrete planning output. Expand any week to see the full breakdown.
1Challenge framing
Output: A draft challenge brief
Challenge framing
Objective
Clarify the health challenge you want to work on: why it matters, who is affected, and whether it suits a human-centred approach.
Lesson topics
- Human-centred design & design thinking
- Systems innovation
- Responsible AI as a support layer
- Challenge framing & assumption mapping
- Defining the scope of a design process
Tooling
- Challenge framing template
- Assumption mapping tool
- Stakeholder starter map
- AI-supported framing prompts
Homework
Practice
Practice the challenge framing tool on a health topic unrelated to your own project.
Apply to your context
Draft and refine a first challenge statement for your organisation.
Live session & mentoring
Cases on moving from broad problems to focused challenges. Mentors review first challenge statements via comments or a short call.
2Discovery planning
Output: A discovery & research plan
Discovery planning
Objective
Prepare a realistic discovery approach to understand the experiences, behaviours, barriers, and contexts of the people affected by your challenge.
Lesson topics
- Design research & empathy
- Research ethics & consent
- Power dynamics & access barriers
- Research & learning questions
- Light-touch fieldwork planning
Tooling
- Research planning canvas
- Interview & observation guide
- Consent & ethics checklist
- AI-supported question generator
Homework
Practice
Practice one of the research techniques on a colleague or friend.
Apply to your context
Prepare research questions and a light discovery plan.
Live session & mentoring
Cases on design research and ethical engagement. Mentors help clarify what to learn, who to engage, and what's realistic in your context.
3Stakeholder & system mapping
Output: A stakeholder & system map
Stakeholder & system mapping
Objective
Identify the people, organisations, relationships, incentives, and system conditions that shape your challenge and its possible solutions.
Lesson topics
- Systems thinking
- Stakeholder & ecosystem mapping
- Incentives, relationships & constraints
- Partner & stakeholder engagement
Tooling
- Stakeholder & ecosystem map
- Influence–interest matrix
- Partner engagement canvas
- AI-supported system mapping prompts
Homework
Practice
Practice the stakeholder or ecosystem mapping tool on a health topic outside your own project.
Apply to your context
Map the actors, relationships, incentives, and enabling conditions around your challenge.
Live session & mentoring
Cases on systems thinking and working across health ecosystems. Mentors help identify who needs to be involved and where alignment is needed.
4Designing & facilitating a design sprint
Output: A design sprint facilitation plan
Designing & facilitating a design sprint
Objective
Prepare a design sprint that helps your team move from research and system understanding to opportunity areas, ideas, concepts, and early storyboards.
Lesson topics
- Design sprint structure
- Digesting research insights
- HMW framing & mapping
- Ideation, voting & selection
- Storyboarding & facilitation basics
Tooling
- Sprint agenda & prep checklist
- HMW builder & mapping tool
- Concept development canvas
- Storyboarding template
- AI-supported sprint planning prompts
Homework
Practice
Practice one of the sprint facilitation exercises with a colleague.
Apply to your context
Draft a sprint plan: purpose, participants, agenda, HMW framing, and expected outputs.
Live session & mentoring
Cases on facilitating sprints with diverse teams. Mentors help make the sprint realistic for your team, timeline, and context.
5Prototyping & prototype testing
Output: A prototyping & testing plan
Prototyping & prototype testing
Objective
Prepare your team to turn selected concepts into simple prototypes and plan how to test them with users, stakeholders, or implementation partners.
Lesson topics
- Prototype formats & fidelity
- Role play, simulation, concept cards
- Assumption testing & test planning
- Feedback interviews & observation
- Ethics, consent & interpreting feedback
Tooling
- Prototype planning canvas
- Assumption test matrix
- Prototype test plan template
- Feedback & observation guide
- AI-supported prototyping prompts
Homework
Practice
Practice one of the prototyping or testing techniques.
Apply to your context
Prepare a prototyping and testing approach for one or more solution directions.
Live session & mentoring
Cases on moving from ideas to low-fidelity prototypes and ethical tests. Mentors help clarify what to prototype and who to test with.
6Adoption, sustainability & next steps
Output: A custom innovation action plan for your organisation
Adoption, sustainability & next steps
Objective
Bring the previous outputs together into a realistic innovation action plan that considers ownership, organisational fit, risks, roles, sustainability, and next decisions.
Lesson topics
- Adoption & ownership
- Sustainability & scale
- Implementation risks & organisational fit
- Roles, responsibilities & decision points
- Learning loops & internal buy-in
Tooling
- Implementation roadmap template
- Risk & readiness checklist
- Roles & responsibilities canvas
- Decision-point planner
- AI-supported roadmap & risk prompts
Homework
Practice
Practice the risk and readiness checklist on a health innovation outside your own project.
Apply to your context
Compile and refine your custom innovation action plan.
Live session & mentoring
Cases on adoption, sustainability, and scale. Mentors review final plans for clarity, feasibility, risks, and next steps.
How a typical week flows
Each week moves from content to reflection, reflection to discussion, and discussion to a concrete planning output.
Self-paced video lessons and resources
Practical homework applied to your organisation
Questions posted on the platform before the live session
A Live Learning Session: cases, discussion and Q&A
Sharing homework in your circle with peers and mentor
Mentor guidance via worksheet comments and messaging, with a live call when needed
Ethical AI across every phase
AI is a practical support layer, not a separate module. Use it to sharpen challenge statements, prepare research questions, organise insights, generate sprint prompts, and structure innovation action plans.
Human judgement, ethics, consent, and lived experience remain central. AI supports better thinking. It doesn't replace listening or decision-making.
Discover
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Implement & Scale
Learn with peers who bring real experience
Cohort members bring real organisational challenges, field experience, and perspectives shaped by their own sector, country, and context.
Peer learning runs through live discussions, Human + AI Practice, Mentoring Circles, and final sharing moments. The cohort itself is part of the value.
The world's most decentralised Innovation & Design agency
Innovation experts in 62 countries across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia, with practical experience from real health and social impact work.
We bring practical experience, including:
Case studies from four continents
Real health-related work, not theory or borrowed examples.
Field-tested tools
Design research, systems thinking, design sprints, co-creation, and innovation action planning.
Co-creation guidance
Working with communities, partners, and stakeholders across health ecosystems.
Mentoring support
Adapt methods to your own challenge, team, timeline, and organisational context.
Built on practical experience across health & social impact
Integrated GBV & SRH services
Through storytelling, journey mapping, and collaborative prototyping, a team redesigned fragmented GBV and SRH services, making care safer and more responsive for women and girls in a fragile context.
HPV uptake & adolescent health
Through Mekeftha dialogues, storytelling, and health fairs, a culturally grounded approach improved HPV vaccine uptake among out-of-school adolescent girls by connecting vaccination with menstrual health, nutrition, and access barriers.
TeekaTalk: behaviour change via conversation
A WhatsApp-based system for HPV vaccine awareness, with persona-driven journeys, myth-busting content, and reminder flows across Hindi, English, and Hinglish. A public health priority turned into a trusted, measurable experience.
Power to Youth: innovation capacity
Teams strengthened their HCD skills through training, coaching, design sprints, and local field research, learning to generate insights, frame challenges, prototype, and validate with young people.
Youth-centred design sprint
A design sprint uncovered barriers young women face accessing digital job opportunities, moving from assumptions to user insights, ideas, and early prototypes aligned with lived realities.
Maternal & newborn care, redesigned from the ground up
Co-creation workshops and community interviews mapped the lived experiences of women, health workers, and families across fragmented facilities in Sindh. The result: a service redesign built on Community Health Coaches, local transport coordination, and respectful care pathways connecting households to facilities.
Meet your trainers and mentors
Practitioners with field experience in health, community research, service design, systems innovation, behaviour change, and responsible AI. They connect methods to the realities of leadership and organisational change.
Keneilwe Munyai
PhD-level designer on a mission to democratise design tools and processes across Africa. Brings rigorous academic depth and field experience applying HCD to complex social and public-sector challenges.
Focus: Design research · Problem framing
Munyala Mwalo
Nairobi-based systems designer who uses design as a decision-intelligence engine across public services, AI, and community systems. Works to make impact inevitable rather than accidental.
Focus: Systems thinking · AI-augmented design
Noel Aryanyijuka
Uganda-based designer trained by CcHUB who began her practice co-designing menstrual health solutions with rural communities. Applies HCD to health systems with a focus on solutions built to last.
Focus: Community co-creation · Health systems
Adugna Endale
Pioneered HCD for immunisation within the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and led the first national training-of-trainers. Has since scaled the approach across nutrition, WASH, and maternal and child health.
Focus: Health systems strengthening · HCD capacity building
Mónica Arbeláez
Partner at a leading Latin American HCD consultancy with over 15 years across healthcare, public services, and agribusiness. Combines participatory design with behavioural science.
Focus: Behavioural design · Participatory design
Emas Potolani
Malawi-based practitioner who has applied HCD across education, health, and disaster response in resource-constrained settings. Committed to solutions that are practical, affordable, and built to outlast the project.
Focus: Community-led design · HCD capacity building
Sue Wairimu
Nairobi-based innovation designer shaped by a million-dollar health innovation programme at the University of Nairobi. Grounds product and service development in the real working conditions of health workers and communities.
Focus: Health innovation · Inclusive product design
Ananyaa Menon
Goa-based interaction designer who built health chatbots for Girl Effect India and co-founded Cooop, a community mutual-aid platform. Specialises in conversational UX and accessibility-first digital health design.
Focus: Conversational UX · Digital health · Responsible AI
Nithima Ducrocq
Bangkok-based strategist who bridges private-sector product rigour with development complexity. Leads multi-country research and service design in health, education, and disaster response across Southeast Asia.
Focus: Service design · Research synthesis · Ethical HCD
Sarah Mpapuluu
Nairobi-based researcher and facilitator with field experience across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Zambia. Applied HCD in HIV prevention campaigns and community co-design across multiple sectors.
Focus: Community research · Co-design · Behaviour change
This 6-week journey is for you if…
- You work to improve health service demand, uptake, trust, or community engagement.
- You lead or influence health programme design, innovation, learning, or implementation.
- You know your organisation needs to innovate, but need a clearer process.
- You want to introduce more human-centred, adaptive, collaborative ways of working.
- You need to prepare before launching a discovery, sprint, or innovation project.
- You want to understand how AI can support innovation without weakening ethics or lived experience.
This is not for you if…
- ✕You're looking for an introductory online course only.
- ✕You want a certificate without working on a real challenge.
- ✕You don't yet have an organisational context where these methods could apply.
- ✕You expect a ready-made solution rather than a guided planning process.
- ✕You can't participate actively in mentoring, peer exchange, and practical tasks.
This may include
Join the 6-week training-and-mentorship journey
Places are limited to keep Mentoring Circles focused, practical, and well-supported.
Every place includes
- Live Learning Sessions
- Human + AI Practice
- Mentoring Circles & mentor feedback
- Practical assignments & peer exchange
- Tools, templates & session recordings
- A final custom innovation action plan
One 6-week journey. One practical outcome.
We don't offer this as separate modules. Learning the methods is only part of the work.
The real value comes from translating those methods into your own organisational reality: your challenge, your team, your partners, your timeline, and your readiness for implementation.
Build your confidence to design better health solutions
Explore human-centred design, systems innovation, design sprints, and responsible AI, while preparing a custom innovation action plan for a real challenge in your organisation.
Places are limited to keep the cohort practical, interactive, and well-supported.
Key dates for the next cohort
Frequently asked
Who is this for?
Senior and emerging leaders in health services, systems, products, or programmes: programme leaders, innovation leads, technical advisors, and MEL or learning leads responsible for how health work is designed, delivered, or scaled.
Is this a course?
Not in the conventional sense. It's a 6-week training-and-mentoring journey. Each phase combines a Live Learning Session, Human + AI Practice, a Mentoring Circle, and an Innovation Action Planning Task, so you learn the methods and immediately apply them to your own context.
Do I need to know HCD before joining?
No. The 6-week journey introduces the core ideas in practical language. The most important requirement is that you bring a real organisational challenge and a willingness to explore more human-centred ways of working.
What kind of challenge should I bring?
A real health-related challenge from your work. It doesn't need to be fully defined. The 6-week journey helps you sharpen it. Good challenges relate to improving services, engaging communities, designing for adoption, or making health work more responsive to people's realities.
Will I implement during the 6-week journey?
Not necessarily. You won't be expected to implement in sync with the cohort. Real implementation depends on your project timeline, team readiness, and organisational conditions. The 6-week journey helps you prepare a custom plan, so you're ready when the right moment arrives.
What happens in the Mentoring Circles?
Small-group sessions where cohort members reflect on their homework, share peer experiences, receive mentor feedback, and adapt the method to their own organisational context.
How is AI included?
As a practical support layer, not the main focus. Cohort members explore how AI can support research preparation, synthesis, ideation, testing, and innovation action planning, while human judgement, ethics, and lived experience remain central.
Why context-specific solutions instead of standard models?
Health challenges are shaped by different realities across communities, cultures, genders, economies, and policy environments. Approaches that work in one setting may fail in another if copied without adaptation. This 6-week journey helps leaders design more context-responsive solutions.
Can more than one person from my organisation join?
Yes, especially useful if your organisation wants to prepare a team. Members from the same organisation can work on the same or related challenges.
How do I apply?
Complete the enrolment form on this page. We'll then share cohort dates, payment options, and onboarding details.