By Maristela Romero
Public health researchers from the University of Maryland are working on a new smartphone app to provide more accessible health information to African-American and Spanish-speaking communities.
The four-year project received a $1.3 million grant from the National Institute of Health’s National Library of Medicine to bridge the health literacy gap within these minority populations.
In 2018, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey that found 20 percent of American adults were dependent on smartphones for internet access rather than traditional sources like desktops or laptops. The center also recognized that smartphone dependency is more common among non-whites and low-income Americans.
The School of Public Health research team plans to deliver “culturally appropriate health information” that can make a difference in health choices, said Dr. Cynthia Baur, the director of the Horowitz Center for Health Literacy and the overseer of the project.
Dr. Robert Gold, a member of the research team and the director of educational innovation at the School of Public Health, said there are many potential outcomes for the project to effectively help “historically difficult to reach populations” through a smartphone application.
“We hear a great deal about the digital divide– but I think it is more than simply lack of access,” Gold said in an email. “I also think it comes from the fact that developers do not design applications to be used by low literacy and non-English speaking audiences.”
Baur emphasized that the main purpose of the app is to improve health literacy in comparison to other health apps in the market that factor in profit.
She said that the developing app is currently in its prototype stage with one dataset supplied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The dataset holds statistics and health information needed to educate and to form advice for the app’s users.
The app provides a built-in tool called MyHealthFinder in which the user can enter personal history and set health goals. It then generates a list of recommendations for the user based on the information entered.
Multiple informational sources will be integrated into the app as its development progresses in the next four years, Baur said. The prototype is being used by African-American and Spanish-speaking members of the community who will continue to give feedback for researchers to make further adjustments.
“It’s all those pieces of information combined with the health recommendations themselves that we hope will prompt people to do more—what we call—health preventive behaviors,” Baur said.
Since the app aims to provide health literacy for non-English speakers, its target demographic is more present in the local community than the student population, who are mostly proficient in English.
“I don’t know about the student community if it would affect us so much,” said Ivan Quiles, a junior computer science major. “You need a pretty good understanding of English to go here.”
Quiles, who immigrated with his family from Puerto Rico, mentioned how his father had an easier time with English than his mother, who continued to struggle after several years of living in the United States.
“For people off-campus, maybe the parents of people who come here, or people who are new to the area or new to America, it would be much more helpful,” Quiles said.
Darian Maitland, a sophomore computer science major, also saw potential in the app.
“I know that a lot of people who don’t speak English, they have a lot of problems trying to get prescriptions and finding a doctor,” Maitland said.
Although the app will not be available until researchers complete a field experiment to test and improve the app based on user feedback, Gold said the research team believes that the finished app will help “overcome traditional barriers posed by low health literacy.”
Photo courtesy of Fiona Yang.