Advancing digital health Equity: Directions for behavioral and social science research

The field of digital health is evolving rapidly and encompasses a wide range of complex and changing technologies used to support individual and population health. The COVID-19 pandemic has augmented digital health expansion and significantly changed how digital health technologies are used. To ensure that these technologies do not create or exacerbate existing health disparities, a multi-pronged and comprehensive research approach is needed. In this commentary, we outline five recommendations for behavioral and social science researchers that are critical to promoting digital health equity. These recommendations include: (i) centering equity in research teams and theoretical approaches, (ii) focusing on issues of digital health literacy and engagement, (iii) using methods that elevate perspectives and needs of underserved populations, (iv) ensuring ethical approaches for collecting and using digital health data, and (v) developing strategies for integrating digital health tools within and across systems and settings. Taken together, these recommendations can help advance the science of digital health equity and justice. Lay summary The field of digital health is quickly growing and changing. Digital health technologies have the potential to increase access to health-related information and healthcare and improve wellbeing, but it is important that those technologies don't widen existing health disparities or create new ones. Behavioral and social science researchers have a key role to play in centering equity in their research teams and theoretical approaches, focusing on key barriers to access, uptake, and usage, studying digital health in ways that elevate the voices and needs of historically under-served groups, being thoughtful about how digital health data are collected and used, and making sure that digital health tools are designed to be used in real-world settings.