JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Older women (age 50+) in the United States comprise a growing share of the community-dwelling population with lived experience of incarceration. When older women return from incarceration to communities, they face barriers in finding work, housing, and regular health care. Many return following extended periods of inadequate care for chronic conditions and little or no access to preventive services. On reintegrating, older women may also struggle to navigate an unfamiliar health services landscape. Much community programming and research in reentry focuses on men and younger women with few programs designed specifically to meet older women’s needs.

Objective:

The Kansas City–based, Older Women Leading Healthy Aging Research Together (OWLHART) patient and stakeholder group was formed to build capacity for engagement in patient-centered research. Our objective in this report is to describe OWLHART’s website co-design project.

Methods:

Over nine months, the OWLHART group and a website design partner applied a liberatory co-design method to develop a website.

Results:

We offer a 6-step co-design process, notes on challenges we met in applying the process, and a project-adaptable checklist.

Conclusions:

Community-based co-design takes time, flexibility, and creativity to maintain commitment across a group, but a structured, iterative approach with an emphasis on equality in participation can help groups achieve and sustain involvement in creating health care tools they desire and can use.