Empowerment can be operational-ized in terms of a sense of control
over one’s life, perceived ability to
influence the societal and organizational structures that influence
one’s life, and confidence in the
community’s collective ability to
improve its health [ 2]. A focus on
empowerment will illuminate to
what extent ICTs can help users
confidently pursue wellness within
their local communities. For example, the Community Mosaic system
began to develop users’ identities as
health advocates by helping them
feel that it is important for them to
advocate healthy eating to others,
and also confident that they have
the ability to do so.
Going Forward
When we take an activist perspective, we begin looking beyond physiological, attitudinal, and behavioral aspects of health. We encounter
a richer, more nuanced, and more
complex space that makes technology design even more challenging.
Focusing our sights on specific geographic communities can provide a
starting point for this work. In addition, ecological models of health
behavior theory and interventions
from the health sciences (those that
explicitly focus on the transactions
between people and their sociocultural and physical environments)
can help us pinpoint specific phenomena to focus on.
Yet even with this body of lit-
erature as our guide, several chal-
lenges arise when doing this kind
of research. First, as we focus on
the structural forces that work for
and against populations, we must
not design systems that overem-
phasize the barriers that exist. It
will be important to help users
overcome these barriers while not
forcing them to constantly dwell
on the problems. Such an overem-
phasis could have the unintended
consequence of frustrating and
overwhelming users. Instead, we
should design systems that portray
and inspire hope, for example, by
highlighting ways in which the
community is succeeding at over-
coming local barriers or by helping
users feel empowered to take on
the problems.
To treat wellness as a state that is
equally achievable for all people
is to neglect a vast body of work
showing otherwise, and national
mandates describing the need for
innovations that address health
disparities. Examining health at the
community level provides a promising way for us to begin tackling
these issues.
More broadly, it is also critical
for HCI researchers engaged with
societal problems beyond health
and wellness to similarly address
issues of inequality and the underlying structural forces and environmental conditions that create
inequities. Designing systems and
conducting research at the community level necessarily involves
understanding how and why neighborhoods differ from one another.
As we examine how ICTs can intervene in diverse contexts such as
education and environmental sustainability, our work will be greatly
enriched as we design and evaluate how activist tools can directly
address issues of power, conflict,
and equity.
ENDNOTES:
1. Hafner, K. Redefining medicine with apps and
iPads. The New York Times, 2012; http://www.
nytimes.com/2012/10/09/science/redefining-medi-
cine-with-apps-and-ipads-the-digital-doctor.html
2. Rogers, E.S., Chamberlin, J., Ellison, M.L.,
and Crean, T. A consumer-constructed scale to
measure empowerment among users of mental
health services. Psychiatric Services 48, 8 (1997),
1042-1047.
3. World Health Organization. Closing the gap in
a generation: Health equity through action on the
social determinants of health. 2008.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Grimes Parker is an assistant professor at Northeastern
University, with joint appointments
in the College of Computer and
Information Science and the
Bouvé College of Health Sciences.
Her research in HCI and CSCW examines how interactive computing applications can address racial,
ethnic, and economic health disparities.
March + April 2013
DOI: 10.1145/2427076.2427082
© 2013 ACM 1072-5520/13/03 $15.00