TY - JOUR T1 - Complexity in Health: Can Design Help Support Interdisciplinary Solutions? JF - Global Health: Science and Practice JO - GLOB HEALTH SCI PRACT SP - S217 LP - S225 DO - 10.9745/GHSP-D-21-00222 VL - 9 IS - Supplement 2 AU - Ledia Andrawes AU - Tracy Johnson AU - Michael Coleman Y1 - 2021/11/29 UR - http://www.ghspjournal.org/content/9/Supplement_2/S217.abstract N2 - Key MessagesThe collaborative nature of design practices is well-suited to creating the conditions for productively integrating varied disciplines to solve challenging problems in global health.The tensions that can arise from merging different disciplines and approaches within public health and beyond, rather than hinder progress, can be surfaced for stronger solutions to emerge.We explore 3 productive tensions that result from integrating global health and design: 1. Integrating explicit and implicit knowledge2. Challenging linearity with iteration3. Enabling collective ownership of processes and solutionsFor these tensions to be productive, design and global health practitioners must do more to be open and adapt to the heritage of other disciplines; both those that have always played a role in global health and those that are just beginning to garner attention in the field.Designers can do more to establish early that they are not there to replace but rather to “accompany” other disciplines through collaboration.Global public health programming has become increasingly complex. Overlapping investments aim at developing health policy, extending the reach of supply chains, supporting more effective service delivery, and addressing demand-related barriers to improve health. Whether it’s vaccine hesitancy, antimicrobial resistance, or health care worker motivation, there is an increasing recognition that many of the problems facing the global health field have human behavioral dimensions that are often poorly understood or addressed. While this recognition has driven many global health program strategists to increasingly integrate qualitative and participatory approaches in program design as well as mixed methods for evaluation, a premium continues to be placed on global health professionals with substantive expertise—often biomedical and heavily quantitative—over the experiential and contextual insights that emerge from direct engagement with end users.There is general agreement that the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed and accentuated entrenched social inequities, revealing … ER -