Designing Health Technologies for Immigrant Communities: Exploring Healthcare Providers' Communication Strategies with Patients

TL;DR

This study explores healthcare providers' communication strategies with immigrant patients in a developed country, emphasizing cultural competence and offering design insights for health technologies to improve communication in diverse communities.

Contribution

It provides new insights into effective communication strategies used by providers with immigrant patients and discusses design implications for culturally competent health technologies.

Findings

Identification of key communication strategies like acknowledgment and community involvement.

Highlighting the importance of adaptive communication practices.

Proposing design approaches for culturally competent health technologies.

Abstract

Patient-provider communication is an important aspect of successful healthcare, as it can directly lead to positive health outcomes. Previous studies examined factors that facilitate communication between healthcare providers and patients in socially marginalized communities, especially developing countries, and applied identified factors to technology development. However, there is limited understanding of how providers work with patients from immigrant populations in a developed country. By conducting semi-structured interviews with 15 providers working with patients from an immigrant community with unique cultural characteristics, we identified providers' effective communication strategies, including acknowledgment, community involvement, gradual care, and adaptive communication practices (i.e., adjusting the communication style). Based on our findings, we highlight cultural competence and discuss design implications for technologies to support health communication in immigrant communities. Our suggestions propose approaches for HCI researchers to identify practical, contextualized cultural competence for their health technology design.