Co-Design in Practice: Lessons from Developing Community-Centered Health Communication for Neurodevelopmental Disorders in South Asia

The poster presentation will share lessons from the NAMASTE program, a five-year initiative in Delhi, Goa, Kathmandu and Colombo to strengthen pathways of care for children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). As part of the community engagement workstream, Quicksand co-designed a community engagement strategy and toolkit with caregivers, frontline health workers, and program teams. The process was grounded in three interlinked practices: co-learning (surfacing lived experiences and tacit knowledge), co-deciding (making programmatic choices collaboratively at key touchpoints), and co-designing (iteratively prototyping tools).¹

The co-design journey produced a multi-component toolkit, including awareness posters, a child developmental check-in calendar, badges to build trust and credibility for frontline workers, expert audio guides, caregiver story videos, and intervention information packets. Prototype testing across four sites revealed important lessons about content, format, and delivery. These include the need to pace information in digestible stages, ensure credibility through trusted messengers, adapt formats to both physical and digital contexts, and use language that is colloquial and addresses all family members.

While program evaluation is ongoing, the process itself demonstrated how co-design fosters trust, builds caregiver confidence, and strengthens the role of frontline workers. The poster presentation will highlight methodological lessons as contributions to SBCC practice, showing that co-design is not only a creative approach but a rigorous methodology for developing communication that is credible, actionable, and sustainable.

^1. KA McKercher (2020) Beyond Sticky Notes: Co-design for Real : Mindsets, Methods and Movements. Inscope Books.