Design Challenge:

Baltimore City has an amazing team of frontline public health workers, VALUE Peer Ambassadors, who engage their communities around COVID vaccination and outreach. Two years into the pandemic, these ambassadors were dealing with collective fatigue and burnout, while still needing to meet their goals of providing accurate information and increasing COVID vaccination. My job was to understand the challenges that Peer Ambassadors were facing and to find ways to better support them.

Design Solution:

My research with the Peer Ambassadors showed that they didn't feel fully connected as a team, their work and efforts were not sufficiently recognized, and they weren't officially seen as individuals working for the Baltimore City Health Department, which made them lack legitimacy. Additionally, they didn’t feel they had the tools necessary to conduct innovative forms of engagement and outreach - such as utilizing social media or creating videos to share online. To address this, my team and I focused on creating the following materials:

1. A VALUE Peer Ambassador Directory to increase connection amongst ambassadors and celebrate their transformational efforts as public health workers.

2. A VALUE Digital Storytelling Toolkit to help ambassadors engage with their communities and spread important, relevant public health information online.