CS 6435: Digital Health Equity

Overview

Digital Health Equity introduces individual, interpersonal, and societal influences on health, and how such influences create health disparities. Using this knowledge as a foundation, the course examines how digital health technologies can be designed to achieve health equity, and how the varied influences on health shape access to, utilization of, and impact of digital health systems.

Students will learn how to apply theory, empirical insights, and perspectives from the social, behavioral, and public health sciences in the design and evaluation of digital health systems that address the disproportionate barriers to health and poor health outcomes experienced by marginalized and underserved populations. Foundations of public health will be examined, including prevention and the prevention paradox, public health ethics, behavioral theories, and social determinants of health. Additionally, the course will have a central focus on applying human-centered design concepts to the domain of digital health equity. The course will examine various ways in which technology can be employed to reduce health disparities, such as thorough education, intervention, and collective action, and discuss the relative effectiveness of these approaches. The course includes a mixture of individual and group assignments.

Students will complete papers, design assignments, discussion prompts, a debate activity, and a semester-long team project in which they will research a health equity issue, and design a software solution to address that issue.