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We present the design of a mHealth application aimed at improving mental health outcomes among young adults representing a Native American population. This study evaluates the application’s effectiveness and user-friendliness, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of its performance utilizing the uMARS (Mobile Application Rating Scale) protocol specifically designed to assess the quality of mobile health applications. Our findings indicate that the design meets both customers’ (young adults) and experts’ (mobile development practitioners) perceptions of the app. Our limitation is the lack of data collection from the population representing the Native American tribe.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available August 7, 2025
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Despite significant cultural strengths and knowledge, Indigenous people around the world experience substantial health inequities due to the historic and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism. As information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly used as part of health interventions to help bridge equity gaps, it is important to characterize and critically evaluate how ICT-facilitated health interventions are designed for and used by Indigenous people. This critical literature review queried articles from three archives focused on health and technology with the goal of identifying cross-cutting challenges and opportunities for ICT-facilitated health interventions in Indigenous communities. Importantly, we use the lens of decolonization to understand important issues that impact Indigenous sovereignty, including the incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge and engagement with data sovereignty.
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To broaden indigenous students' participation in Computer Science (CS) education, we conducted a research practitioner partnership (RPP) project, where teachers were taught the CS principles lessons offered by Code.org and asked to integrate mobile application development within their current courses. Additionally, modules and guidance were provided on culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP), and an in-classroom implementation of a five-day lesson plan was co-created via a participatory approach. In this experience report, we describe the RPP organization and early findings from our collected teachers' pre/post survey, lesson plans, projects, and students' pre/post survey. The positive outcomes from our RPP project provided valuable teacher learning experiences and actionable, culturally responsive computing lesson plans for the indigenous community.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available May 16, 2025
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Despite high incidence of depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress disorder, stigma and lack of access to culturally responsive behavioral health care resources prevents many Native Americans (NA) from seeking care. However, the rise of culturally-responsive in-person and digital behavioral health resources for NA communities provides new opportunities to address these longstanding health equity issues. The major challenge is helping people in NA communities find these meaningful resources and helping anchor institutions understand how resources are being sought and utilized to support more responsive internal programming. In this context, we have partnered with Hopi Behavioral Health Services (HBHS) to design the Resilience Resource Database to digitally disseminate mental and behavioral health resources. This paper presents initial findings that have resulted from the initial stage of an iterative participatory design process with HBHS.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available July 1, 2025
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Session presenters/authors have worked to support STEM education in Native American serving schools for many years. During the last few years, substantial progress has been made towards capacity-building and sustaining culturally sustaining STEM activity. This session will highlight the ways that improved communication and collaboration among project partners (teachers, teacher educators, school administrators, community members, STEM professionals) have supported this progress. Recommendations for Native American STEM partnerships based on these experiences will be shared in this session.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available March 25, 2025
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Session presenters/authors have worked to support STEM education in Native American serving schools for many years. During the last few years, substantial progress has been made towards capacity-building and sustaining culturally sustaining STEM activity. This session will highlight the ways that improved communication and collaboration among project partners (teachers, teacher educators, school administrators, community members, STEM professionals) have supported this progress. Recommendations for Native American STEM partnerships based on these experiences will be shared in this session.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available March 1, 2025
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As the push to increase computer science (CS) education access for all students in the U.S. grows across states and regions, schools that work with traditionally underserved populations such as Native Americans (NA) have a particular challenge in navigating this new landscape for educational systems. Most curriculum in CS can be hard to implement in schools that have not yet developed the capacity of their staff to teach CS due to the rigid sequence of topics and skills. One approach to expanding CS into these settings is to work with content area teachers to develop mobile apps that not only relate to their content but can also expose students to CS skills. The NSF-funded project Let’s Talk Code recognizes the unique opportunities for Native American-serving schools and has developed an approach that could have broad appeal for secondary schools that do not have well-developed CS programs but want to increase access to CS for their students through an integrated approach that can also connect to sustaining language and culture.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available March 1, 2025
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In this extended abstract we present the design, development, and evaluation of a Minecraft-based simulated task environment to conduct human and AI teaming research. With the deluge of AI-driven applications and their infiltration into many activities of daily living, it is becoming necessary to look at ways that humans and AI can work together. There is a tremendous research burden associated with accurately evaluating the best practices and trade-offs when humans and AI have to collaborate together in completing critical tasks. Minecraft offers a low-cost alternative as an early investigating tool for researchers to build answers to emerging research questions before significantly investing in human-AI teaming activities in the real world. We demonstrate successfully via a simple rule-based AI, insights that could highly influence human-AI teaming activities can be derived to improve practical and viable development of protocols and procedures. Our findings indicate that simulated task environments play a critical role in furthering human AI teaming activities.more » « less
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The emergence of reinforcement-based AI for text generation (Chat-GPT) and image creation (Dall-E) has opened a wide range of possibilities for changing the game design and development process. While game development researchers have mostly focused on integrating these technologies to improve production workflow and demonstrate their use in the creation of content for entertainment purposes (intelligent NPCS), there is very little knowledge on how to integrate this technology into the design of educational games. In this paper, we present the results of integrating reinforcement AI (text and image generation) into educational gaming experiences by graduate students enrolled in a game-based learning course. The students were given a core set of requirements that enable the integration into their project with some flexibility on the desired educational outcome. The produced experiences were then evaluated by a small sample of experts (gaming and learning sciences) and their observations were compiled. Specifically, we describe the wide range of experiences developed by the students and the results of a qualitative study with a small group of experts that evaluated these experiences. Our results indicate that reinforcement AI-based integrations into educational game design and development helps enrich the user experience and has the potential to improve learning outcomes.
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Background The prevalence of human papillomavirus (HPV) and its related cancers is a major global concern. In the United States, routine HPV vaccination is recommended for youth aged 11 or 12 years. Despite HPV being the most common sexually transmitted infection and the vaccine’s proven efficacy, the vaccination rate among US youth remains below the recommended 80% completion rate. Mobile health (mHealth) interventions have demonstrated promise in improving health. Examining and synthesizing the current evidence about the impact of mHealth interventions on vaccination coverage in youth and intervention characteristics could guide future mHealth interventions aimed at mitigating the vaccination gap and disease burden.
Objective This study aims to conduct a systematic review to assess the effectiveness of mHealth interventions on parental intent to vaccinate youth against HPV and youth’s vaccine uptake.
Methods We searched empirical papers through databases including Google Scholar, PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Cochrane Library. The inclusion criteria were the following: (1) published between January 2011 and December 2022; (2) using mHealth aimed to improve HPV vaccination rate; (3) targeted unvaccinated youth or their parents; and (4) measured HPV-related knowledge, vaccination intention, or vaccine uptake. Overall, 3 researchers screened and appraised the quality of the eligible papers using the Melnyk Levels of Evidence and the Cochrane Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation methodology. Disagreements in search results and result interpretation were resolved through consensus.
Results Overall, 17 studies that met the inclusion criteria were included in the final review. Most studies were conducted in the United States (14/17, 82%), used a randomized controlled trial design (12/17, 71%), and adopted behavior change theories or a culture-centric approach (10/17, 59%). mHealth interventions included SMS text message reminders, motivational SMS text messages, computer-tailored or tablet-tailored interventions, smartphone apps, web-based tailored interventions, social media (Facebook) campaigns, digital videos, and digital storytelling interventions. Approximately 88% (15/17) of the mHealth interventions demonstrated positive effects on knowledge, intention, or behaviors related to HPV vaccination. Overall, 12% (2/17) reported limited or no intervention impact on vaccine uptake or vaccine series completion. Effective vaccine uptake was commonly seen in interventions based on behavior change theories and those that provided culturally relevant information.
Conclusions This systematic review identified the impact of mHealth interventions among unvaccinated youth and their parents, which showed improvement in HPV-related knowledge, vaccination intention, or vaccine initiation. The interventions that incorporated theories and culture-centric approaches revealed the most promising results. Although these outcomes are encouraging, future studies are needed to investigate factors associated with the success of interventions using SMS text messaging or social media. More studies are also needed for a better understanding of the intervention elements that boost the responses of age-specific and ethnicity-specific populations.