Skip to main content
ABCT 2023 Annual Convention Main banner
Final Program


Program Flipbook
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.
Presentation Icons
Ticketed Session
Ticketed Session
Recorded Session
Recorded Session
Back
Evaluation ViewAttendees 3

Category: Technology

Symposium 119 - Breaking Down Barriers: Bridging Evidence-Based Digital Mental Health Care and Culturally Inclusive Technology

Sunday, November 19, 2023
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM PST
Location: Chiliwack (402), Level 4
CE: 1.5

Keywords: Technology / Mobile Health, Culture, Evidence-Based Practice
Level of Familiarity: Basic to Moderate
Recommended Readings: Spanhel, K., Balci, S., Feldhahn, F., Bengel, J., Baumeister, H., & Sander, L. B. (2021). Cultural adaptation of internet- and mobile-based interventions for mental disorders: a systematic review. NPJ digital medicine, 4(1), 128. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-021-00498-1,   Marwaha, J. S., & Kvedar, J. C. (2021). Cultural adaptation: a framework for addressing an often-overlooked dimension of digital health accessibility. NPJ digital medicine, 4 (1), 143. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-021-00516-2,   Willis, H. A., Gonzalez, J. C., Call, C. C., Quezada, D., Scholars For Elevating Equity And Diversity Seed, & Galán, C. A. (2022). Culturally Responsive Telepsychology & mHealth Interventions for Racial-Ethnic Minoritized Youth: Research Gaps and Future Directions. Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology : the official journal for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, American Psychological Association, Division 53, 51 (6), 1053–1069. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2022.2124516,   ,  

Digital mental health interventions have the potential to be culturally inclusive, but it ultimately depends on how they are designed, developed, and implemented. Unfortunately, most digital mental health tools and interventions fail to pay adequate attention to these factors, which can limit their accessibility and effectiveness for individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. This symposium explores how evidence-based digital mental health tools and interventions can be developed and modified to become more culturally inclusive. These presentations represent various mental health problems, evidence-based digital tools, and strategies that promote cultural inclusivity and enhance the quality of care for all clients.

Speaker 1(A. Chiu) provides a demonstration of building culturally inclusive training videos on CBT strategies to help youth cope with the stress of COVID through a collaborative process with family advocates and stakeholders in healthcare, including the CDC and NASEM. Chiu will present pilot data evaluating feedback from parents and their youth on the micro-learning videos. Speaker 2(J. Duong) examines sociocultural barriers and supports to utilizing mobile health tools using a mixed methods approach. These findings highlight the importance of creating opportunities for clients from diverse backgrounds to provide feedback on the development of inclusive technologies. Speaker 3 (A Knapp) examines how digital mental health services can collaborate with public libraries to provide scalable mental health solutions for adolescent patrons from diverse backgrounds. Their findings suggest public libraries are highly promising settings for deploying digital mental health services for adolescents. Speaker 4 (G. Ramos) discusses the process of culturally adapting an app-based mindfulness meditation intervention to improve treatment outcomes for people of color who experience elevated levels of discrimination. This cultural adaptation approach can effectively promote treatment engagement among people of color receiving digital mental health interventions. Lastly, Speaker 5 (A. Aguilera) discusses work with recruiting and training community peer supports to work with clients using mobile app for depression and anxiety. This work emphasizes the importance of engaging with community stakeholders in the process of building culturally informed tools.  
Our discussant (J. Comer) will describe how culturally inclusive digital mental health tools and interventions such as the ones presented here can be achieved through the integration of collaborative design and will discuss themes, considerations, and future directions for bridging the gap between evidence-based care and culturally inclusive technology.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the session, the learner will be able to:
  • Identify strategies for creating culturally inclusive digital mental health tools and interventions.
  • Explain mixed-methods for identifying barriers & supports for diverse clients using mobile health tools.
  • Discuss the implementation and dissemination of evidence-based treatments in real-world clinical settings.
  • Discuss how collaborative design bridges evidence-based care and culturally inclusive tech in digital mental health interventions.
  • Discuss the importance of cultural inclusivity in digital mental health interventions.
  • List strategies to engage diverse clients in developing inclusive technologies through feedback for effective mental health interventions.