PolicyLab is a research center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHoP) that conducts and translates research on child health policy. The project involved a redesign and content restructuring of the PolicyLab Drupal site, completed while consulting with Eastern Standard.
The content migration was a significant structural component of the work. The existing site organized content under three primary categories, and the redesign moved to a substantially different four-category structure aligned more closely with the types of content PolicyLab produces — research articles, publications, expert profiles, and multimedia. Migrating content across a category structure change in Drupal requires careful handling of taxonomy terms, content type fields, and URL aliases to avoid broken links and ensure content remains discoverable.
The custom Drupal theme was revamped to a new design, incorporating updated UI components including newsletter signup forms and image carousels. A category filter was added to the search results index page, allowing visitors to narrow results by content type — an important usability addition for a research organization where the audience may specifically seek policy briefs, academic publications, or expert commentary.
Dedicated landing pages were built for each of the main content groups: research articles, projects, publications, experts, and webinars. These landing pages gave each content type a structured entry point for visitors navigating the site by interest area rather than through search. The project required close coordination with the Eastern Standard team to ensure the content migration, new taxonomy structure, and theme changes were implemented without disrupting the site's editorial continuity.
