The creative co-design of low back pain education resources

Background: Evidence-based guidelines provide clinicians with best practice recommendations but not the means to implement them. Although co-design is increasingly promoted as a way to improve implementation there is frequently insufficient detail provided to understand its contribution. The presented case study addresses this by providing a detailed account of how a specific co-design approach contributed to an improving back pain education project in line with national guidance. Aim: The aim was to use creative co-design to produce prototype evidence-based back pain educational resources that were sensitive to context. Objectives: • Assemble a group of relevant stakeholders for a series of workshops. • Use creative activities that encourage divergent and convergent thinking to iteratively understand the problem and develop prototype solutions. • Thematically analyse outputs of each workshop to determine content of subsequent workshops. • Present a final prototype ready for implementation. Key conclusions: • This approach produced an innovative system of thematically linked back pain educational resources that were contextually sensitive, evidence-based and ready for implementation. • Research knowledge was successfully blended with stakeholder experiential knowledge. • The creative methods helped diverse stakeholders develop trusting relationships and ensured everyone's experiences and ideas were included. • The process of co-creation and the objects created had vital roles in surfacing and understanding stakeholder knowledge, promoting innovation and facilitating implementation. • The design process facilitated an evolving understanding of a complex problem alongside prototype development. • It is recommended that these methods be considered by other project teams.