Noa

Design researcher Noa van den Brink explores how preventive healthcare can align with the values of young families in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. She investigates parental value tensions around healthy nutrition and uses co-design methods with families to identify ways to address these challenges, including the role of social support in coping with them. Noa aims to co-design with parents and their values to create more meaningful, equitable health interventions that fit real family contexts. 

More about Noa:

Noa is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft, with a background in Industrial Design. Her research focuses on co-designing equitable preventive health interventions. She is currently doing this in her PhD by exploring the value tensions that parents living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods face when making nutrition decisions. She investigates how design can help parents navigate these tensions within their socio-ecological context.

Her PhD is part of Our Smart Family Buddy, a multidisciplinary consortium that aims to support young families in adopting healthy lifestyles by leveraging technology, their neighbourhood environments, and their strengths. Noa also collaborates with local neighbourhood stakeholders to enhance the project’s possible impacts. She values the opportunities she gets through her work to listen to diverse lived experiences and to use design methods to translate these insights into directions for meaningful and equitable change.