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A Call to Action: Using and Extending Human-Centered Design Methodologies to Improve Mental and Behavioral Health Equity

Mental health disparities directly tie to structural racism. Digital mental health (DMH), the use of technologies to deliver services, have been touted as a way to expand access to care and reduce disparities. However, many DMH fail to mitigate the persistent disparities associated with structural r...

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Autores principales: Stiles-Shields, Colleen, Cummings, Caroline, Montague, Enid, Plevinsky, Jill M., Psihogios, Alexandra M., Williams, Kofoworola D. A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9081673/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35547091
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2022.848052
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author Stiles-Shields, Colleen
Cummings, Caroline
Montague, Enid
Plevinsky, Jill M.
Psihogios, Alexandra M.
Williams, Kofoworola D. A.
author_facet Stiles-Shields, Colleen
Cummings, Caroline
Montague, Enid
Plevinsky, Jill M.
Psihogios, Alexandra M.
Williams, Kofoworola D. A.
author_sort Stiles-Shields, Colleen
collection PubMed
description Mental health disparities directly tie to structural racism. Digital mental health (DMH), the use of technologies to deliver services, have been touted as a way to expand access to care and reduce disparities. However, many DMH fail to mitigate the persistent disparities associated with structural racism that impact delivery (e.g., costs, dependable internet access)–and may even exacerbate them. Human-centered design (HCD) may be uniquely poised to design and test interventions alongside, rather than “for,” marginalized individuals. In employing HCD methodologies, developers may proceed with a vested interest in understanding and establishing empathy with users and their needs, behaviors, environments, and constraints. As such, HCD used to mindfully address structural racism in behavioral health care may address shortcomings of prior interventions that have neglected to elevate the voices of marginalized individuals. We argue that a paradigm shift in behavioral health services research is critically needed–one that embraces HCD as a key methodological framework for developing and evaluating interventions with marginalized communities, to ultimately promote more accessible, useful, and equitable care. The current commentary illustrates practical examples of the use of HCD methodologies to develop and evaluate DMH designed with marginalized populations, while also highlighting its limitations and need for even greater inclusivity. Following this, calls to action to learn from and improve upon HCD methodologies will be detailed. Acknowledging potential limitations of current design practices, methodologies must ultimately engage representative voices beyond research participation and invest in their active role as compensated and true collaborators to intervention design.
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spelling pubmed-90816732022-05-10 A Call to Action: Using and Extending Human-Centered Design Methodologies to Improve Mental and Behavioral Health Equity Stiles-Shields, Colleen Cummings, Caroline Montague, Enid Plevinsky, Jill M. Psihogios, Alexandra M. Williams, Kofoworola D. A. Front Digit Health Digital Health Mental health disparities directly tie to structural racism. Digital mental health (DMH), the use of technologies to deliver services, have been touted as a way to expand access to care and reduce disparities. However, many DMH fail to mitigate the persistent disparities associated with structural racism that impact delivery (e.g., costs, dependable internet access)–and may even exacerbate them. Human-centered design (HCD) may be uniquely poised to design and test interventions alongside, rather than “for,” marginalized individuals. In employing HCD methodologies, developers may proceed with a vested interest in understanding and establishing empathy with users and their needs, behaviors, environments, and constraints. As such, HCD used to mindfully address structural racism in behavioral health care may address shortcomings of prior interventions that have neglected to elevate the voices of marginalized individuals. We argue that a paradigm shift in behavioral health services research is critically needed–one that embraces HCD as a key methodological framework for developing and evaluating interventions with marginalized communities, to ultimately promote more accessible, useful, and equitable care. The current commentary illustrates practical examples of the use of HCD methodologies to develop and evaluate DMH designed with marginalized populations, while also highlighting its limitations and need for even greater inclusivity. Following this, calls to action to learn from and improve upon HCD methodologies will be detailed. Acknowledging potential limitations of current design practices, methodologies must ultimately engage representative voices beyond research participation and invest in their active role as compensated and true collaborators to intervention design. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9081673/ /pubmed/35547091 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2022.848052 Text en Copyright © 2022 Stiles-Shields, Cummings, Montague, Plevinsky, Psihogios and Williams. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Digital Health
Stiles-Shields, Colleen
Cummings, Caroline
Montague, Enid
Plevinsky, Jill M.
Psihogios, Alexandra M.
Williams, Kofoworola D. A.
A Call to Action: Using and Extending Human-Centered Design Methodologies to Improve Mental and Behavioral Health Equity
title A Call to Action: Using and Extending Human-Centered Design Methodologies to Improve Mental and Behavioral Health Equity
title_full A Call to Action: Using and Extending Human-Centered Design Methodologies to Improve Mental and Behavioral Health Equity
title_fullStr A Call to Action: Using and Extending Human-Centered Design Methodologies to Improve Mental and Behavioral Health Equity
title_full_unstemmed A Call to Action: Using and Extending Human-Centered Design Methodologies to Improve Mental and Behavioral Health Equity
title_short A Call to Action: Using and Extending Human-Centered Design Methodologies to Improve Mental and Behavioral Health Equity
title_sort call to action: using and extending human-centered design methodologies to improve mental and behavioral health equity
topic Digital Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9081673/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35547091
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2022.848052
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