Doing Undone Science through Community-Driven Technology Development Towards Health Equity

• In Event: Innovating, Interrupting & Regenerating the Human-Technology Frontier - II

Abstract

Technology advancement has radically yet unevenly transformed the course of society. There exists a significant and growing digital divide between black and white households (US Census 2017). Attention to this gap, however, emphasizes access to computing technologies (e.g. personal computer, broadband, mobile devices) and not implicit biases encoded within the process of technology development. We consider how technology processes could be different if they were explicitly driven by community groups not traditionally given priority in technology design. We ask, how could a community driven technology design process contribute to the conduct of undone scientific research? This multi-year study, currently in its first year, begins with a series of four focus groups, conducted from December 2018 through February 2019, four water quality workshops held in April and May 2019, and dialogue sessions in June and July 2019. Over a three-year period, through analysis of existing resources, co-development of new low-cost technologies for water quality monitoring, and conducting a community-driven pilot study on the efficacy of these new tools, this project aims to examine the effect of co-developed low-cost technologies for environmental monitoring on environmental health literacy, trust in official water data sources, and community capacity for mobilizing to address health equity. We draw from Paolo Freire’s critical pedagogy which uses a three-stage process of 1) listening, 2), dialogues for problem/solution identification, and 3) action for change, and that assumes that the goal of the engagement is to disrupt and transform inequitable power dynamics that support impaired environmental health.

Author

• Jennifer S Carrera, Michigan State University