Principles and implementation strategies for equitable and representative academic partnerships in global health informatics research.

OBJECTIVE

Developing equitable, sustainable informatics solutions is key to scalability and long-term success for projects in the global health informatics (GHI) domain. This paper presents key strategies for incorporating principles of health equity in the GHI project lifecycle.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) GHI Working Group organized a collaborative workshop at the 2023 AMIA Annual Symposium that included the presentation of five case studies of how principles of health equity have been incorporated into projects situated in low-and-middle-income countries and with Indigenous communities in the U.S. and best practices for operationalizing these principles into other informatics projects.

RESULTS

We present five principles: (1) Inclusion and Participation in Ethical, Sustainable Collaborations; (2) Engaging Community-Based Participatory Research Approaches; (3) Stakeholder Engagement; (4) Scalability and Sustainability; (5) Representation in Knowledge Creation, along with strategies that informatics researchers may use to incorporate these principles into their work.

DISCUSSION

Presented case studies and subsequent focus groups yielded key concepts and strategies to promote health equity that may be operationalized across GHI projects.

CONCLUSION

Equitable, sustainable, and scalable GHI projects require intentional integration of community and stakeholder perspectives in project development, implementation, and knowledge creation processes.