Work

Designing Health Technologies for Immigrant Communities: Exploring Healthcare Providers' Communication Strategies with Patients

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Patient-provider communication is an important aspect of successful healthcare, as it can directly lead to positive health outcomes.Previous studies examined factors that facilitate communication between healthcare providers and patients in socially marginalized communities, especially developing countries, and applied identified factors to technology development.However, there is limited understanding of how providers work with patients from immigrant populations in a developed country.By conducting semistructured interviews with 15 providers working with patients from an immigrant community with unique cultural characteristics, we identified providers' effective communication strategies, including acknowledgment, community involvement, gradual care, and adaptive communication practices (i.e., adjusting the communication style).Based on our findings, we highlight cultural competence and discuss design implications for technologies to support health communication in immigrant communities.Our suggestions propose approaches for HCI researchers to identify practical, contextualized cultural competence for their health technology design.

Source: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

DOI: 10.1145/3706598.3713782

Authors: Zhanming Chen, Alisha Ghaju, May Hang, Juan Fernando Maestre, Ji Youn Shin

Institutions: University of Minnesota, Swansea University

Language: English

Topic: Cultural Competency in Health Care

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Good health and well-being, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: University of Minnesota