Cooper University Health Care: IDD Educational Series
Visiting a healthcare facility can be a significant challenge for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), such as autism. This means that many of these individuals and their families either delay care or avoid it all together, leading to health disparities among this population.
Cooper University Healthcare has been working to better meet the needs of this patient population, taking steps to better educate staff about the special needs of this population and to provide accommodations both leading up to the visit and during their visit on-site.
As part of that education, Cooper engaged our team to help them develop an educational series to help caregivers, medical students and associated hospital staff better understand these patients and how they experience the world and the healthcare environment.
Through clear, accessible storytelling and real-world scenarios, the series breaks down complex concepts into digestible segments designed for busy medical professionals and hospital staff.
Produced in collaboration with subject matter experts, the videos emphasize empathy, communication, and best practices—making them a valuable resource for training and ongoing professional development. The videos are also being shared with other healthcare organizations and at medical conferences to help educate medical professionals outside of the Cooper University Healthcare system.
The series started production in late 2023 and was split up into 3 rounds, ending production in early 2025. In total, Narrative Media produced 29 videos. Below are a few examples of videos from the series.
Program Overview
VR Experience Reaction – An Autism Experience
Using the Sensory Cart During Visits
Visualizing Your Visit Video Series
Knowing that many patients with IDD can be uncomfortable in unfamiliar environments, we created a series of “visual storytelling videos” showing spaces in the hospital that patients with IDD often visit. These videos are being shared with family members and caregivers of patients with IDD to help the patients become more familiar with spaces in the hospital system, helping them avoid challenging behaviors that can disrupt or make a visit more challenging if not impossible. We created these videos for each of the hospitals campuses. Below are two examples.
