CAREER: Enabling Healthier Futures: Understanding and Strengthening Sociotechnical Ecologies of Frontline Health Work

COVID-19疫情强调了前线卫生工作的社会技术生态对整个社会福祉的重要性。该项目将致力于开发新知识，了解如何通过利用数据驱动和技术介导的全球卫生方法，使在资源有限、服务不足的社区提供关键的最后一英里护理的一线卫生基础设施更加强大。先前的研究发现，这种方法所依赖的数据经常是有偏见的，不完整的，或缺失的。因此，数据基础设施-个人健康记录、一线健康调查、社交媒体和在线健康论坛上的活动-往往无法反映当地的社会文化特点。该项目将努力积极参与主要是女性一线卫生工作者（FHWs）的代表性不足的声音-也是最脆弱和最受影响的人-设计技术介导的一线卫生工作流程。它将研究通过使一线卫生工作更加可见，通过选择性自动化分配护理工作的负担，并提供工人可以用来向改善经济生计过渡的途径来支持这些技术工作流程。它将致力于改善来自服务不足社区的寻求护理者的健康结果，改善工人的未来，以及健全的整体医疗生态。该项目将研究如何使用以社区为中心的参与式方法，将数据驱动和技术介导的医疗保健引导到更强大的前线健康生态的设计中。该项目将在以人为本的计算和前线健康的交叉点推进学术研究，将调查三个研究问题。首先，如何设计和增强数据实践和工具，以捕获目前尚未充分可见的FHWs的工作，以便在州和医疗保健当局之间更好地识别这项工作？第二，如何自动化或支持日常工作流程，使工作更易于管理，并有效地分配负担？第三，移动的卫生技术如何支持家庭保健工作者的数字和数据素养，以便在日益社会技术化的一线卫生生态中实现专业成长和就业机会？这些研究问题将通过数据收集方法的组合，结合设计和开发系统，与当地合作伙伴一起解决。该项目将综合各种要素，为设计框架做出贡献，该框架能够解决相互关联的权力结构和运作问题，从而影响未来与历史上被边缘化的社区的研究工作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes how sociotechnical ecologies of frontline health work are vital to the wellbeing of society at large. This project will work to develop new knowledge about how to make frontline health infrastructures that deliver critical last-mile care in resource-constrained, underserved communities more robust, by leveraging data-driven and technologically mediated approaches to global health. Prior research has found that the data that such approaches rely on is frequently biased, incomplete, or missing. As a result, data infrastructures--individual health records, frontline health surveys, activity on social media and online health fora—often fail to capture local, sociocultural specificities. This project will work to actively engage the underrepresented voices of predominantly women frontline health workers (FHWs)—also among the most vulnerable and impacted—toward designing technology-mediated frontline health workflows. It will investigate supporting these technology workflows by making frontline health work more visible, distributing the burden of care work through selective automation, and providing avenues workers can use to transition toward improved economic livelihoods. It will work toward improved health outcomes for care-seekers from underserved communities, improved futures for the workers, and robust overall healthcare ecologies.The project will research how data-driven and technologically mediated healthcare can be directed toward the design of stronger frontline health ecologies, using community-centric, participatory approaches. Advancing scholarship at the intersection of human-centered computing and frontline health, the project will investigate three research questions. First, how can data practices and tools be designed and augmented to capture the work of FHWs that is currently not adequately visible, to enable better recognition of this work across state and healthcare authorities? Second, how can routine, everyday workflows be automated or supported to make work more manageable and the burden effectively distributed? Third, how can mobile health technologies support digital and data literacies among FHWs, to enable professional growth and employment opportunities in increasingly sociotechnical ecologies of frontline health? These research questions will be addressed through a combination of data collection methods, in conjunction with designing and developing systems, with local partners. The project will synthesize elements to contribute a design framework that grapples with interlocking power structures and oppressions, in order to impact future research undertakings with communities that have been historically marginalized.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.