Abstract
Digital health equity is the fair and just distribution of digital health resources and opportunities to all people, regardless of their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, disability, location, or other social determinants of health.
Health inequities, broadly, are pervasive across communities, cultures, and contexts and we have seen little success in closing these gaps. As such, achieving equity and reducing disparities in health are global priorities. Health technologies have the potential to improve health outcomes for everyone, but they can also exacerbate health disparities if they are not designed and implemented with equity in mind. As digital platforms like smartphone apps, social media, wearables, and virtual and augmented reality applications become increasingly ubiquitous for health communication, medical research, and clinical treatment, it is critical to weave health equity concerns throughout planning, development, evaluation, and implementation stages. Additional formative research is also needed to underlie evidence-based approaches to achieve these goals.
Topics include, but are not limited to:
Understanding barriers that prevent people from minoritized groups from accessing or using digital health technologies, as well as strategies to overcome such barriers Development or evaluation of digital health interventions that are culturally tailored for health disparity populations, including formative research in this area (e.g., needs assessments) Implications of social media discourse patterns for promoting or worsening health equity in various health contexts Research on approaches to achieve recruitment of representative samples in digital health research Evaluation of research methods or tools that rely on digital data or tools to quantify aspects of social determinants of health, resource inequities, or health disparities Formative research and/or development of bias reduction via digital means (e.g., virtual reality) in the health, medical education, or healthcare context Sub-sample analyses of digital health interventions that focus on acceptability, efficacy or related outcomes specifically for groups experiencing health disparities Research on experiences with digital health communication channels or health technologies among members of minoritized groups Establishing patterns of digital health technology access, use, and efficacy between social groups
Promoting Health Equity in Digital Health Technologies and Communication