Digital Health Disparities Initiative
disrupt. decolonize. democratize.
DHDI is a public health initiative optimizing digital strategies to disrupt intergenerational health disparities in humanitarian & development settings.
About Us
DHDI works closely with community-based organizations to design digital responses to chronic social determinants influencing poor health.
DHDI creates synergy between chronic barriers to health equity and digital equity-- leveraging these gaps with the commercial mobile market push into lower income communities in humanitarian & development settings.
Starting & Ending with Local Ownership
DHDI scaffolds digital strategies that are seeded locally-- from citizen science driven by women to digital health data governance led by community-based organizations.
Together with our civil society partners, we are igniting a digital pivot to operationalize decolonial global health & gender strategies in humanitarian & development settings.
DHDI
Research
Review
More Women's Mobile Phone Ownership & Less Digital Health Impact: Evidence of Shifting Digital Gender Gaps in South Asia
Mobile phone ownership has and continues to be an important metric when measuring progress in closing digital gender gaps. But, as inexpensive data has enabled broader mobile phone use among low income segments of communities,
recent evidence indicates women's mobile phone ownership is adapting to traditional gender norms instead of transforming them.
A synthesis of recent evidence from mobile health interventions in South Asia provide a bell weather for navigating digital gender gaps in other regions as mobile markets mature. In particular, evidence suggests caution interpreting women's mobile phone ownership as a proxy for women's access and agency.
