Strategy, Design, Evaluation, and Performance for Health Systems Impact
Cense is a full-service strategic design and innovation partner for health leaders seeking to innovate, adapt, create, and sustainthebest in their teams, organizations, and themselves.
Our specialty is strategy, evaluation, and design for complexity in human systems for health.
We connect strategy, service design, evaluation, and leadership support together to help leaders achieve health impact in complex conditions.
There are few areas where you can make a bigger positive difference to people’s lives. That’s probably why you and your leadership colleagues show up to work each day. It’s also why protecting your team (and you, included), while looking after the people you serve, matters.
It’s also why orienting the work you do to what matters most is so important.
We are here to help you find your way through complexity,tell the story of your program, measure impact, and achieve more than you thought possible, while maintaining your health as a leadership team.
Imagine what this would look like? That’s where we also help: enkindling creativity and the power to see things differently.
I’m Cameron Norman, the founder of Cense. I’ve spent over two decades working at the intersection of health, design, and complexity — as a consultant-pracitioner, educator, and researcher.
I trained as an organizational and communitypsychologistin public health, and have studied and taught systems and design thinking. I’ve also spent my career as an evaluator, working at the intersection of health and social impact.
As Principal, I lead our to work in helping organizations make things better by making better things through service and evaluation.
Cense has a team of associates with deep expertise in health systems, evaluation, service design, and behavioural science to serve leaders seeking to innovate, grow, and shape their organization’s impact.
Design isn’t just about what we make, but what we become in the process of making things that matter.
Our Approach to Design for Health
Most strategy work produces a plan. Strategic design creates an organization that can actand adapt when the plan meets reality.It also enkindles the kind of creativity that supports innovation, by working with our clients as partners.
At least, that’s how we do it. Strategic design builds products, services, and evaluations, and it also contributes to building the capacity of your organization to think strategically, evaluatively, and creatively to innovate.
It puts you and your team at the centre.
Our logo tells a story about our work.
We put people at the centre of what we do, connecting them to their roots to ground their actions in their values, mission, aspirations, and talents so that they can flourish, grow, and thrive.
A healthy living system is grounded, free to grow, has strong roots, and is well-connected.We design for living systems
We bring psychology, human-centred design, and more than 25 years of experience working with leaders across organizations and in communities to bring compassion, creativity, and innovation to those who serve, promote, and protect health.
Most evaluations produce reports. Few produce change. What makes our approach different is that we create pathways to connect evidence to action for the people who use it
Our Design-Driven Evaluation approach is unique and grounded in the science of systems and complexity, world-class evidence generation, with strategic design.
We design evaluations, measurement frameworks, and learning systems that help your organization understand what’s working, why, and what to do next. Our Credentialed Evaluation services connect evidence to design.
Where Strategy Becomes Service: What Strategic Design Brings
Strategy and evidence only matter when someone can act on the plans and knowledge generation. Health by design is about making that happen — turning insights, intentions, and plans into services, programs, and systems that work for the people who use them and the teams who deliver them. Strategic design connects systems, feedback, and ideas to help you innovate and build the services and systems required to produce health.
Design is putting form to ideas. Evaluation tells the story of those ideas in action.
We connect strategy and evidence using service design to help you channel your talent and deliver programs and services that generate positive impact.
Explore our servicesto learn how we can support your work, and subscribe to our learning resources to stay inspired. Visit our blog and Censemaking for insights on strategic design for innovation and impact.
Our office is located on the ancestral and traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. We pay respect to this land’s stewards and Elders, past and present, and to the future generations who continue to care for it. At Cense, we are humbly committed to supporting Truth and Reconciliation through our actions, advocacy, listening, and understanding.
