Not a Blank Slate

Noora Health's Care Companion Program (CCP) provides valuable information to family caregivers on quality care. However, our programming at the time did not address the caregivers’ existing belief systems. Many caregivers brought pre-existing health beliefs and understandings, which sometimes contradicted the information provided in CCP, making it less effective.

This Caregiving Lab was tasked with guiding the redesign of aspects of our program for more reliable behaviour change. We hypothesized that this was possible to do by addressing myths and misconceptions patients held, and working in harmony with traditional practices. 

PROCESS

We conducted interviews with carers and communities in urban and rural towns across India, focusing on communities who are traditionally disconnected from the medical system or hold deep-seated mistrust of doctors, ensuring we captured their unique perspectives.

Through the project, we spoke with patients, nurses, doctors and caregivers across 3 states in India and came up with a comprehensive list of myths and misconceptions across districts and condition areas, that we then mapped out based on impact (risk to life) and approach (negotiating vs eliminating). As we synthesized these learnings, we uncovered themes underlying the origin of these beliefs and found that at the core of the problem was trust. 

Whether absent, misplaced or eroded, most conversations we had illuminated that trust, more than authority or medical accuracy, led people to choosing who they believed. This then led us to our next direction based on building trust, to be picked up more deeply in a subsequent project.

OUTCOMES

The project resulted in a game meant for medical content designers, healthcare educators, and others who support caregivers and patients in India, aimed at increasing awareness and providing a toolkit of approaches where mistrust or misconceptions may be barriers to adherence to medical advice. 

NOT A BLANK SLATE: THE GAME

The Not A Blank Slate game is an interactive browser-based game. It was born from the compelling stories and insights arising from this research. It is a 'choose your own adventure' game where players take on the role of a young mother in rural India. Players tackle complex scenarios that take place in a young mother's journey, make tough decisions, and attempt to make sense of the sometimes conflicting information a mother encounters. 

The game offers a powerful narrative experience that explores themes of resilience, collaboration, and the fight against mistrust in our healthcare system today.