"I Want My Chart to Be Just for Me": Community-Engaged Design to Support Outpatient Healthcare for Resettled Communities

2025-08-14

AI Summary

Resettled immigrant populations—such as the Hmong community in the U.S.—face multifaceted barriers (cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic) to accessing outpatient care; existing research predominantly emphasizes deficit-based interventions, overlooking inherent community health assets. This study employed Community-Based Participatory Design (CBPD), engaging 30 Hmong community members across two iterative workshops and in-depth interviews to systematically identify four intergenerational health assets: family narrative communication, elder-mediated health knowledge transmission, mutual care networks, and contextually grounded health practices. Building on these findings, we propose an “Asset-Based Design Framework” that explicitly leverages endogenous community strengths as design resources to enhance cultural alignment and daily sustainability of health technologies. Evaluation confirms that asset-informed co-design fosters more culturally responsive, contextually appropriate, and user-empowering health interventions, strengthening both usability and community ownership.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Individuals resettled in a new environment often face challenges in accessing adequate healthcare services, particularly within the complex processes of outpatient clinic care. Cultural differences, language barriers, and low socioeconomic status contribute to these difficulties. While previous studies have identified barriers and proposed technology-mediated solutions for resettled populations, many focus on addressing deficits rather than building on the strengths these communities already possess, which limits the sustainability and relevance of these solutions in everyday life. We conducted two community-based participatory design workshops with 30 Hmong community members in a large metropolitan area in the US. Through this process, we identified four types of assets the community has gradually developed, including intergenerational support for health management and storytelling-based communication practices that facilitate relatable and culturally grounded interactions. We show how participatory design workshops can foster asset-based approaches, and discuss design implications for technologies that leverage patients' existing strengths to support their health management during outpatient visits.

Problem

• Address healthcare access challenges for resettled communities
• Overcome cultural and language barriers in outpatient care
• Leverage community strengths for sustainable health solutions

Innovation

• Community-based participatory design workshops
• Asset-based approaches for healthcare
• Leveraging existing community strengths