Interdisciplinary Sticker Project Addresses Overdose Epidemic

Using strategically placed stickers, an undoubtedly low-tech tool, an interdisciplinary team of Jefferson faculty and students have started work to make in-roads in the country’s opioid crisis.

The story starts with Dr. Gregory Jaffe, clinical assistant professor and co-director of JeffMD’s Population Health Research Scholarly Inquiry Track.

As a medical resident in Baltimore—a city with a 20.1% poverty rate and the country’s highest drug overdose rate—Dr. Jaffe became interested in teaching and, importantly, caring for underserved patients.

“That’s my calling in medicine,” says Dr. Jaffe, who also started the addiction clinic for Jefferson’s family and community medicine residency program. “Stigma is one of the main reasons that people who use drugs and suffer from substance abuse disorders don’t seek care. They feel stigmatized by their healthcare providers. That was the nexus of this entire project: to create an anti-stigma, harm-reduction curriculum delivered over social media.”

He believes stickers geared toward healthcare and medical students would be an effective type of “guerilla education.” Slapped on laptops, water bottles and notebooks, the stickers with Gen Z slang and meme-friendly graphics would feature a QR code to harm-reduction-related topics on Instagram.

“Short on-demand videos have just as much knowledge retention as a traditional 30-minute didactic,” says Dr. Jaffe of the microlearning concept. “I learn a ton from TikTok and Instagram.”

To get his work off the ground, a colleague recommended he contact Renee Walker, an associate professor in Jefferson’s BS in visual communication design and MS in health communication design programs. She teaches the graduate course, Communicating Health Data, which introduces the principles of designing data and info, focusing on health-related issues.

Walker created the class with health communication design students in mind, but it quickly became a popular elective for MS in user experience and interaction design students.

She runs a partner project in the course that tackles a real-world health data issue each semester. Previous ones include a system to help patients with chronic conditions better communicate symptoms to doctors; an experience map of opioid use disorder (OUD) patients in Philadelphia; and an electronic medical record for an expressive arts therapist.

“I love projects that challenge students to rethink how we approach complex and messy problems by applying information design skills with a human touch,” Walker says. “When I heard about the harm-reduction project, I saw an opportunity for students to explore using data graphics to humanize a subject that needs attention.”

Along with Walker, Dr. Jaffe is working with second-year Sidney Kimmel Medical College student Gwen Vogelsang to bring the concept to fruition. She attended undergrad in Pittsburgh, another city with high opioid use, and came to Jefferson to work in addiction medicine.

When Vogelsang met Dr. Jaffe and heard his pitch, she instantly knew she wanted to join the project.

“If we reach medical students at a certain time in their training, they’re more likely to bring harm-reduction principles and actions into their future care,” says Vogelsang, a volunteer at JeffHOPE, one of the country’s largest student-run medical clinics. “I’m bringing an understanding of medical student knowledge and ways we can incorporate these concepts outside the traditional med school curriculum to reach future healthcare providers.”

UX/IxD students Nikitha Polavarapu and Yan Lyn Yeoh worked on the project in Communicating Health Data last semester and will continue with it past the initial phase.

While learning about the basics of harm reduction, they created stickers about Narcan and other topics with data-driven reminders about the effectiveness of OUD treatment. They target a Gen Z audience by leveraging popular slang and trends.

Stylized as a text message, one reads: “Did you hear only 1 in 10 receive OUD treatment? Imagine being one of the 9 … not very slay, huh?” (QR codes and micro-learning messages will be rolled out in the future.)

Walker says the students’ work shows how contemporary communication styles can be adapted to deliver serious healthcare messages in an approachable yet impactful way.

“We grew up with stickers,” Yeoh says. “It’s a great conversation starter if it’s on your water bottle or in your room. The idea is to build awareness and get people to ask the question, ‘What is harm reduction?’”

Yeoh and Polavarapu say they benefited from the additional support from Dr. Jaffe and Vogelsang as the project progressed.

“As UX students, we deal with a lot of empathy and understanding the user, trying to find out their problems and needs,” Polavarapu says. “Stepping into health care brought us a new perspective. We conducted in-depth research to help us understand the root cause of substance use disorder and how we can actually help people.”

Developing the project also allowed Vogelsang to broaden her understanding of the patient experience.

“I give props to Jefferson,” she says. “They’re really committed to incorporating different disciplines together. Bringing something in from another campus was cool to be part of. I’m in my own studying bubble sometimes, but now I see this whole other side.”

Walker says this project shows how Jefferson offers powerful opportunities for transformative impact when merging distinct but complementary disciplines.

“Like yin and yang, medicine brings essential research foundations, deep clinical expertise and invaluable on-the-ground experience working directly with patients,” she says. “Meanwhile, visual communication designers contribute their creative strategic thinking, foundational design principles and sophisticated human-centered research methods.”

When these different perspectives and skill sets come together thoughtfully, they create the potential for meaningful, lasting impact that neither field could achieve alone, Walker stresses. “This interdisciplinary collaboration allows us to approach complex healthcare challenges with scientific rigor and human-centered design sensibility.”

Dr. Jaffe thanks Walker and all the students involved for their assistance and creativity, and he believes others at the University can help as well.

For example, he plans to work with the BS in fashion merchandising and management program to develop shirts with similar harm-reduction and anti-stigma messaging. Program Director Nioka Wyatt sees this as an excellent opportunity to highlight courses focused on product development and marketing, an area dedicated to leveraging branding and design to drive meaningful social change in the community.

“We have such a big, rich ecosystem at Jefferson,” Dr. Jaffe says. “Learners can contribute and add their expertise and enthusiasm to our project in many ways. We’re just scratching the surface.”