We’re discussing global health, implementation science, computing, and human-centered design research. Share or ask about evidence and insights, and join us for journal clubs!
This forum is a great place to ask questions about the evidence that informs design and implementation of Community Health Toolkit apps. It’s also a place where researchers can present their ongoing work and ask for feedback. To get started, I’d like to mention a few recent and ongoing studies that we’ll be discussing here in the coming months:
Fabian Okeke and Nicky Dell at Cornell Tech have been working with Medic’s Senior Researcher Beatrice Wasunna to study how we might incorporate beneficiary or care recipient feedback into the infrastructure for data-driven performance management in community health. We published a paper about our initial exploratory fieldwork has been published, and a paper based on our initial design and prototyping is under review.
Caroline Whidden and the team at Muso led an RCT on precision performance management in a community health system in Mali. We found that 360 degree supervision, aided by a personalized visual dashboard, could significantly increase CHW’s number of monthly house visits. The paper was published in the journal of global health and you can read a blog post about the study.
Alongside Living Goods in Kenya, we’re designing and testing a risk profiling algorithm to enable CHWs to provide more proactive, differentiated care for the people and households that are the most likely to face barriers to accessing care. It’s a key part of our exciting new data science roadmap and the pilot is ongoing.
Caryl Feldacker at I-TECH and the University of Washington is leading an NIH-funded RCT on using interactive two-way messaging for post-surgical follow up in a Voluntary Male Medical Circumcision program. We wrapped up the initial study in Zimbabwe and will be publishing results in the coming months.
Alongside, Medic Mobile’s Chief Design Officer Dianna Kane, I wrote a paper titled Human-Centered Design for Global Health Equity. The first part of the paper is an extensive literature review that examines what human-centered design is and what value it may offer the global health community. The second part of the paper reflects on our experiences with human-centered design at Medic Mobile. Originally this was a chapter in my PhD thesis, and a journal article version is now forthcoming in Information Technology for Development (in the mean time you can check out the pre-print version).
I’m familar with these studies because they invole me or the Medic Mobile research and impact staff, but there’s lots of additional ongoing research that I’m not as immersed in, and I’d encourage you to post it here! Roughly once a month we’ll be organizing journal clubs, where a group of us agrees to read the same article and discuss it on this forum (or/and a call). If you’d like to suggest a published or draft paper for discussion, feel free to direct message your suggestion to @isaacholeman. Thanks!