2024 Theses Doctoral

From participants to partners: A spectrum of approaches to adolescent and young adult engagement in digital health research

Landers, Sara Elizabeth

To address today’s most pressing adolescent and young adult (AYA) health issues, researchers are increasingly using digital technologies to facilitate interventions. Studies conducted using digital crowdsourcing, mobile health (mHealth) applications, and wearables such as smartwatches may offer unique benefits, including more widespread access to tailored intervention content. However, there is a great deal of variation in the extent to which AYA themselves have a voice in this research, which affects not only a study’s ethical integrity, but also potentially its outcomes.

This three-paper dissertation presents a spectrum of approaches to AYA engagement in digital health research, examining the implications of each approach. Collectively, these papers suggest that the genuine and meaningful engagement of AYA in digital health research is a health promotion strategy that may boost the likelihood of intervention relevance, acceptability, and impact for this population.