The Brief

The Family Support Team (FST) is one of the existing mental health programs offered by Hennepin Healthcare's Mother-Baby Program, Minnesota's first intensive mental health program for pregnant and postpartum mothers. This project aimed to increase awareness for the FST program and increase ability of OB & Pediatric providers to better support the mental health needs of patients and families throughout their pregnancy to parenting journey. 

How might we improve the way OB patients & families of color receive mental health support throughout their pregnancy to parenting journey? 

The Approach

The project applied different human-centered and service design methodologies to understand patients, define the opportunities and design the service offer. 

Through ethnography work, stakeholder analysis and patient interviews, several insights emerged:

The team took these insights, brainstormed potential solutions, and prioritized two concepts — 

• Standard of Care Visit: Invite OB patients and Pediatrics parents to experience FST as a standard touchpoint in their care, initially focusing on a group visit format 

• Care Team Portrait: Provide care team members and patients a view of all care offered in OB & Peds to build awareness and help distinguish between services 

To test these concepts, the team conducted a co-creation session with four pregnant women & two care providers, utilizing journey mapping activities & service roleplaying to design a patient-centered view of the hospital’s service offerings, determine if Standard of Care visits are desirable for patients, and further understand opportunities around group visits. 

The Results

Through our synthesis, we learned that patients want to feel blessed, prepared, and confident throughout their pregnancy.

“I want as much insight as possible from my provider and family about bringing new life to life.” - Shari

“I feel blessed - my family didn’t doubt me when I told them I was pregnant.” - Tonya

In order to feel this way, patients need support, information, and to be able to meet their own needs.

Using the journey map exercise, we learned that expecting mothers navigate a wide range of emotional highs & lows, and key moments occur as pregnancy becomes more real— physically & emotionally

We also learned that while the current care at the hospital is seen as important, visits were limited, short, and not always supportive.

“There’s not enough time to even think of what questions to ask. It feels like I have to do all the research on my own - and I don’t know what information to trust.” - Mariana

In the future, mothers-to-be want informed, connected and inclusive care

The team recommended additional research and testing to further understand how to normalize emotional support as a standard of care for staff and expecting mothers.

Potential experiments

• Emotional Support Standard of Care Visit - Invite patients (OB + Peds) to experience emotional support in a group setting as a standard touchpoint in their care

• Care Team Portrait - Create a visual of emotional support available to OB & Peds families to build awareness and help distinguish between services

• Run a ‘live-prototype’ (all parts of the system run simultaneously to understand effectiveness) with a small group of CTMs and their patients