Co-Ideating with Caregivers and Healthcare Professionals: Socio-Technical Strategies to Support Early Childhood Nutrition

Malnutrition is a major public health concern that threatens the lives of millions of children around the world. Caregivers and healthcare professionals play a crucial role in shaping healthy eating habits for infants and young children (IYC). Taking a socio-technical approach, this study explores the perspectives, ideas and strategies of caregivers and healthcare professionals to address IYC nutrition challenges in two low-resource communities in Peru. Following a co-design approach, we conducted four co-ideation workshops with separate sessions for caregivers and healthcare professionals. Using different materials, participants collaboratively co-created different ideation boards that supported the idea generation process and discussion among participants. The co-created ideation boards show a number of socio-technical strategies to promote and support healthy complementary feeding practices and enhance caregivers’ and IYC experiences at the healthcare centre highlighting the situated elements of caring ecologies. Based on our findings, we present a number of implications for socio-technical design to support early childhood nutrition and promote healthy feeding practices in low-resource settings.