This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ This template was updated on May 12th 2021 Essential Medications A co-created learning and design opportunity Kate Sellen, Nav Persaud, Stuart Werle, Mariam Al Bess, Nick Goso, Ruslan Hetu, Habiba Soliman, Alyssa Bernado, Norm Umali #261 The purpose of the Essential Medications project was to design the packaging and branding for CLEAN Meds (Carefully Selected and Easily Accessible at No Charge Medicines), together with a team of doctors, pharmacists, and patients. The project was realized as a co-created experiential learning opportunity through an undergraduate advertising and packaging studio class, and pro- ject-based learning opportunity. The Essential Medication project is a collaboration between the Community Guidance Panel of the CLEAN Meds project and team, at MAP Centre for Urban Solu- tions, at Unity Health and the Health Design Studio at OCAD University with undergraduate pro- grams in graphic design and advertising. Students worked closely with all stakeholders to design a look and tone for the project together with a packaging design, that appealed aesthetically, and paid close attention to issues of implementation, accessibility, stigma, and trust. This case study discusses the structuring of the project and the insights gained from structuring and supporting this co-created learning opportunity as well as insights on adjustments for COVID 19 Keywords: health design; co-design; medication; experiential learning Introduction Ontario College of Art & Design University has a strength in design education related to medical and health contexts with both an undergraduate emphasis and a full graduate program devoted to health design. In Fall of 2019, the Health Design Studio, a research hub in health design research, was approached with a packaging project for a research initiative providing essential medicines – the CLEAN Meds project. With issues of stigma, community involvement, public health and health system values as factors, the project is an ideal learning op- portunity for students in health design. In conversation with program chairs and family medicine researchers it was decided to run the project through two undergraduate programs as a first step. The programs chosen were advertising and a packaging course in the graphic design program. Both running in Winter of 2020, the advertising students’ would be able work on branding and positioning and then hand-off to the packaging students around the mid-term, each class with access the CGP, pharmacist, and family physician as subject matter experts. At the end of the term, several concepts would be chosen from each class to take forward for further development and eventually production over the summer term. Essential Medications Nearly 2.4 million people in Canada cannot afford to pay for the medications that they have been prescribed. This includes life-saving medication and those essential for managing chronic illness (Morgan et al, 2017). Can- ada is the only high-income country without universal access to essential medicines despite having a publicly funded health service. This impacts how often and how much medication some patients take, leading to ad- herence problems and disease management issues (Gupta, et. al, 2018).