Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action

Background: Together, community-based participatory research (CBPR), user-centered design (UCD), and health information technology (HIT) offer promising approaches to improve health disparities in low-resource settings.

Objectives: This article describes the application of CBPR and UCD principles to the development of iDecide/Decido, an interactive, tailored, web-based diabetes medication education and decision support tool delivered by community health workers (CHWs) to African American and Latino participants with diabetes in Southwest and Eastside Detroit. The decision aid is offered in English or Spanish and is delivered on an iPad in participants' homes.

Methods: The overlapping principles of CBPR and UCD used to develop iDecide/Decido include a user-focused or community approach, equitable academic and community partnership in all study phases, an iterative development process that relies on input from all stakeholders, and a program experience that is specified, adapted, and implemented with the target community.

Results: Collaboration between community members, researchers, and developers is especially evident in the program's design concept, animations, pictographs, issue cards, goal setting, tailoring, and additional CHW tools.

Conclusions: The principles of CBPR and UCD can be successfully applied in developing health information tools that are easy to use and understand, interactive, and target health disparities.