Digital Health Social Justice Toolkit

Guiding Questions

We provide a framework with five key questions to guide researchers wishing to conduct digital health for social justice.


We hope that encouraging researchers and practitioners to ask these questions will help to spark a transformation in digital health towards more equitable and ethical research.

Toolkit Questions Figure

1. Who is represented in my research, and why?

  • Who (community members/user groups) is going to inform, influence, and be influenced by my research? 

  • How might my digital health project have the most value for them?

  • Have I asked them about their needs? What resources or strengths do they already have that could be built off of? 

  • Are the community members/users with whom I am interacting representative of the population I wish to reach?

2. How can I design apps for those with low digital literacy?

  • What does my participants' access to current digital resources (devices, broadband/cellular data) look like?

  • What is their level of digital, reading, numeracy, and health literacy?

  • What kind of support, e.g. installing apps, using them daily, do they need to use digital interventions, and how often do they need it?

3. What are my responsibilities in protecting and returning data to communities? 

  • Am I collecting the minimum data necessary to answer the research question? 

  • How can I help participants understand the benefits and dangers of participating in the research?

  • How will participants learn about the insights gained from the use of their data throughout the study?

  • How will I measure the success of my research as a researcher, and more importantly, for my population of interest?

4. How might my research aggravate societal biases, sexism, and racism? 

  • Am I using "empowering and inclusive" language and design in my app and research? Am I refraining from using terms that may unintentionally harm?

  • Do my research team and (community) partners consist of people from different backgrounds and with different lived experiences? Are everyone’s voices heard?

  • Do I expect differences in outcomes based on participants intersecting identities (e.g. men, women, non-binary individuals, race/ethnicity) within or between groups? How will I analyze this?

5. How can my research address societal injustices that prevent good health?

  • To what extent do historical societal injustices affect my (potential) participants’ health? 

  • Can digital solutions address these injustices, and how?

  • Can I examine how these injustices (social determinants of health) affect the success of my interventions?