Health Councils exist in every County in Tennessee and bring together a diverse range of individuals with different backgrounds to utilize data and information provided by the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) to make decisions about and assess the needs of the health of their communities. This set of individuals was targeted by the SmartSHOTS team as the ideal resource for identifying the barriers to immunization that exist in Tennessee.

Volunteers from these councils joined the SmartSHOTS team for a series of engagement meetings, driven by design thinking, where they participated in a series of activities aimed at empathizing and understanding the barriers many Tennesseans face in the pursuit of immunizing the children they care for. This helped the SmartSHOTS team not only understand the physical barriers, but also the mindset and fears of those who may be seeking care.

A total of seven meetings were held with volunteers from across the state, and barriers such as time, transportation, misinformation, and many others were identified. The SmartSHOTS team also learned more about the various resources available across counties in Tennessee and is seeking ways to integrate a range of services into the final app.

         In the month of October, the next series of meetings will be held as the team nears the completion of the ‘user flow’ of the app. The user flow is the ‘roadmap’ of the app, and it will include both the features of the app, as well as how users will navigate through the app to utilize the features. Volunteers will assess the degree to which the user flow helps potential users navigate to information and resources that will help overcome the barriers they have helped to identify. These assessments will guide the SmartSHOTS team as they begin the process of building the prototype of the smartphone app.