Essence Lynn Wilson

Digital-based health interventions (DHIs), defined as health services delivered electronically, have demonstrated effectiveness in promoting health outcomes. However, DHIs often suffer from low user retention, a challenge attributed to limited attention to sociocultural determinants and insufficient user engagement strategies. This paper explores participatory animation (PA), a collaborative methodology that engages community partners in co-creating animated content, as a strategy to improve DHI retention and effectiveness. Drawing from existing literature, this viewpoint examines the theoretical foundations and practical affordances of PA for enhancing DHIs. We describe PA as a multistep production process that integrates participant-driven oral and visual design contributions into multimedia outputs for use in DHIs. Here, PA shows promise in producing engaging and culturally resonant content, with the potential to improve intervention uptake and sustain user engagement. Despite these affordances, PA remains underused in health research. Given the growing urgency to develop effective, equitable DHIs, PA offers a novel, community-informed approach for enhancing both design and implementation. This paper positions PA as a methodological frontier for DHI science.

Despite increasing diversity on predominantly White college campuses, African American college students remain subject to racial discrimination, creating a complex array of mental health stressors. In this study, we adopted a strengths-based approach to mental health in this population and investigated (a) whether school-based discrimination contributes to negative mental health outcomes; (b) whether internal, interpersonal, and campus sources of strength contribute to positive mental health outcomes; and (c) whether internal sources of strength moderate the mental health effects of discrimination. Secondary analysis was performed on public data from African American college students (N = 1,444; M_age = 24.67, SD_age = 7.87) who participated in the Healthy Minds Study between 2017 and 2020. Healthy Minds Study is a cross-sectional survey examining mental health factors in U.S. university student populations. School-based racial discrimination was negatively associated with flourishing and positively associated with depression. Flourishing was positively associated with all sources of strength, including academic persistence, religiosity, racial identity, race-based affinity space involvement, and campus climate for diversity. Depression was inversely associated with persistence, religiosity, and affinity space involvement. Except for persistence, internal sources of strength did not mitigate the negative effects of discrimination on mental health outcomes. Policies are needed that hold accountable campus members who perpetrate race-based aggressions, tangible support systems involving African American mentors and cultural affinity groups, and strengths-based audits of students seeking mental health care. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

UNSTRUCTURED Digital-based health interventions (DHIs), defined as health services delivered electronically, have proven to be effective tools for health promotion. However, user retention remains low, an outcome predicted by insufficient integration of socio-cultural determinants and limited user engagement. This study explores participatory animation (PA), a methodology involving community partnerships in creating animated content as a strategy to mitigate retention rates. PA is a multi-step production process capable of creating engaging and efficacious multimedia deployable stimuli while leveraging a co-creation process through participants’ oral and visual design assessment. However, this method has been historically underutilized in health scholarship. The urgent need to develop effective DHIs emphasizes the promise of PA as a methodological frontier. This paper offers a perspective on PA’s practical and theoretical potential to improve digital intervention design and function from existing literature.

Background: Adolescents and young adults account for over 21% of new HIV infections in the U.S. with most new cases among young men. As an important information source for this group, social media can uniquely reveal the perspectives and communicative patterns of this key population. We identified 6,439 young male Twitter users (ages 13–24) in the U.S. using an NLP pipeline with geolocations. From their Twitter timelines, we collected 24,600 HIV-related tweets, among which the most retweeted and favorited tweets (n = 472) were analyzed through a content analysis. Results: Three themes arose in this online viral discourse around HIV among young men: (i) othering, (ii) politics and activism, (iii) risk and wellness. Othering tweets contained stigmatizing jokes and insults alienating individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, or being elsewhere on the gender and sexuality spectrum (LGBTQIA +), and people with HIV. Politics and activism tweets discussed awareness, stigma, HIV criminalization, violence, LGBTQIA + , and women’s rights. Risk and wellness tweets discussed risk behaviors for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) (e.g., condomless sex, transactional sex, multiple sexual partners), or safer sex and preventive practices (e.g., pre-exposure prophylaxis [PrEP], condom use, achieving undetectable viral load, medication adherence, and STI testing). Conclusion: The social acceptability of high-risk sex behaviors is high among young male Twitter users. Given the double-edged nature of social media—health-promoting (e.g., awareness, health activism) as well as risk-promoting (e.g., risky behavior endorsement, identity attacks)— this population may benefit from targeted health communication intervention. Future HIV prevention efforts should counter the stigma, misinformation, and risk-promoting viral messages prevalent on social media.

Adolescents and young adults account for over 21% of new HIV infections in the U.S. with the majority of new cases among young men. As social media is an important information source integral to the lives of youth, our study illuminated the discourse around HIV among this group by examining the most retweeted and favorited tweets (n = 472) among 24,600 HIV-related tweets from young male Twitter users (ages 13-24) in the U.S. From content analysis, three themes arose: 1) othering, 2) politics and activism, 3) risk and wellness. Othering tweets involved alienating LGBTQIA+ individuals and people with HIV through stigmatizing jokes and insults. Politics and activism tweets discussed awareness, stigma, HIV criminalization, violence, LGBTQIA+ and women’s rights. Risk and wellness tweets discussed risk behaviors for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) (e.g., condomless sex, transactional sex, multiple sexual partners), or safer sex and preventive practices (e.g., PrEP, condom use, achieving undetectable viral load, medication adherence, STI testing). The themes illustrated the double-edged nature of social media, with both harmful and health-promoting messages. Twitter and other social media provide novel tools to inform and disseminate health communication. Future HIV prevention interventions should counter the stigma, misinformation, and risk-promoting messages prevalent on Twitter.