Human-Centered Solutions, Systems-Level Impact: Insights from the 2025 Chittenden Symposium

On October 8, faculty, students, and researchers from the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering and Department of Health and Kinesiology gathered at the iHotel for the 2025 Chittenden Symposium: “Lifelong Health by Design – Human-Centered Innovations in Chronic Disease Prevention.” The event united experts across disciplines to explore how engineering precision and health science insight can combine to design systems that foster long-term, equitable health outcomes.

Dr. Shannon Mejía, associate professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology and one of the symposium’s co-organizers, opened the event by emphasizing its central purpose: to foster new collaborations between health and engineering researchers. “We wanted to create a space to understand the problem and solutions better—together,” Mejía said. The organizing team, representing both departments, used faculty and student input to identify five cross-cutting themes that served as focal points for the day’s discussions.

Following an interactive poster session showcasing interdisciplinary research projects, attendees gathered for a keynote address from Dr. Minal Patel, professor of Health Behavior and Health Equity at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Patel—a nationally recognized expert in healthcare affordability and chronic disease management—delivered a powerful talk that wove together personal experience and systemic insight, challenging the audience to rethink the future of prevention and care delivery.

Patel shared stories that underscored the fragility of the healthcare system and the real human cost of its gaps, from missed diagnoses to cybersecurity failures. Her message was clear: the tools and technologies to prevent many chronic diseases already exist, but implementation remains inconsistent and inequitable. “We know how to prevent and manage these conditions,” Patel said. “We have the interventions; we have the knowledge—but we’re failing at delivery. We’re failing at the systems level. That’s the gap this symposium exists to close.”

She called for the kind of collaboration embodied by the Chittenden Symposium—a partnership that brings together engineers and health scientists to design systems that are not only innovative, but also reliable, accessible and sustainable. “Preventing chronic disease requires both understanding how our bodies work and designing systems that support them throughout our lives,” she said.

After the keynote, participants joined breakout sessions organized around the symposium’s five cross-cutting themes:

• Systems Perspectives on Health Care Access explored care fragmentation during transitions—such as from hospital to home or primary to specialty care—and the importance of centering patients as whole individuals within these complex networks.
• Monitoring & Analysis of Digital Health Indicators addressed the “data rich, insight poor” challenge, emphasizing the need for standardized, interoperable systems that balance privacy with accessibility.
• Human-Centered Design for Chronic Disease Management focused on understanding patients as dynamic individuals whose needs evolve over time, highlighting the need for adaptive design and long-term usability.
• Systems to Promote Earlier Lifecourse Behaviors considered how to support prevention earlier in life, long before chronic conditions typically emerge.
• Community, Network and Collaborative Processes examined how trust and equity can be rebuilt in partnerships between researchers, clinicians, and the communities they serve.

Across breakout sessions, faculty and students shared insights from diverse disciplines—ranging from AI-powered diagnostic tools and wearable sensors to behavioral science and community engagement models. Discussions revealed both the complexity of the challenges and the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration to produce meaningful, scalable solutions.

In the Human-Centered Design group, Dr. Inki Kim, symposium co-chair and research assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, reflected that “even the patient is not a static entity. Their preferences and lifestyles change over time, and our systems need to evolve with them.” Others proposed novel ideas, such as community health agents—human or robotic—who could proactively monitor wellness in underserved areas, thereby reducing barriers to care. The Digital Health Indicators group discussed how engineers and clinicians can better align around shared data standards and quality metrics, while the Healthcare Access group emphasized designing solutions that account for the full human experience, not just clinical outcomes.

Each discussion demonstrated that the future of health innovation depends on continued collaboration between these two academic disciplines. As Patel reminded the audience, “The biggest challenges can’t be solved by either field alone.”

The Chittenden Symposium honors the legacy of Bill and Carol Chittenden, whose vision for bridging engineering and health sciences continues to inspire research, education and innovation across campus. Through their generosity, the Carol L. Chittenden Fellowship awards support graduate students in both the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering and the Department of Health and Kinesiology—ensuring that their shared belief in human-centered, interdisciplinary problem solving endures.

As the event concluded, participants reflected not only on the challenges discussed but also on the new partnerships and ideas sparked by the day’s conversations. Dr. Abigail Wooldridge, assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, summarized this spirit, explaining, “Solutions should be human-centered and process-driven, paying attention not just to designing the solution itself, but to implementing it in context and disseminating it broadly. And we need to remember that there are many humans involved—it’s not just the patient or the clinician, but everyone who shapes that human-centered process.” Her words captured the collaborative mission that defines the Chittenden Symposium: uniting engineering precision and health understanding to create systems that work for everyone.