Designing mHealth for Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations

Organized by the USC mHealth Collaboratory, the event features three speakers who will discuss the topic of “Designing mHealth for Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations.”

USC School of Social Work Associate Professor Shinyi Wu, associate director of social and health services research at the Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging, will present her mobile automatic depression assessment system, which was developed for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. She will discuss considerations for developing this technology for use in these underserved and racially diverse populations, and present some of her study outcomes.

USC Professor Vickie Mays, director of the BRITE Center, will talk about important considerations and the necessary steps to develop mHealth technologies that are appropriate and effective for racial and ethnic minorities. The BRITE Center supports the innovative use of research, science and policy development to help eliminate disparities in physical and mental health for communities that are traditionally underserved by academic research.

Doctoral candidate Maggie Ramirez will talk about her user-centered design approach and some preliminary results of her mHealth application to promote physical activity among underserved, predominantly Hispanic patients with diabetes.