The lives of adolescents and young adults (AYAs) have become increasingly intertwined with technology. Multidisciplinary perspectives and collaboration are needed to capitalize on the strategic use of technology during key developmental windows. Technology-rich models of behavior change, with opportunities for personalizing health interventions, offer significant transformative potential to improve adolescent and young adult health. There is considerable momentum behind advancing integration of digital health technology to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the clinical encounter, and rapid advances in technology provide mechanisms for enabling AYAs to take agentic roles in promoting health practice and policy.
This Special Issue, Innovative Digital Technologies to Improve Adolescent and Young Adult Health, evolved from our collaborative multidisciplinary research that has been supported by the National Science Foundation under the Smart and Connected Health: Connecting Data, People, and Systems program (IIS-1344670 & IIS-1344803), with the goal of accelerating the development and integration of innovative technology to support the transformation of health and medicine.
In the special issue, we are excited to share articles that highlight the potential of innovative technologies to promote AYA health and well-being. The need for the AYA health community to engage in multidisciplinary work to address key challenges posed by health technologies, including access, inequity, bias, privacy, security, and integration into clinical workflows and adolescent lives, is essential. This requires an intentional focus on inclusivity for all AYAs, especially those historically excluded, without which these technologies will reproduce existing inequalities and structural racism in health care. The rapid shift to online technology for clinical services delivery, research data collection, and education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the opportunities and perils of innovative techologies, particularly in regard to disparities in access, inequity, and privacy concerns. We are grateful to the guest editor of this Special Issue, Professor Lena Sanci, and the many authors who have contributed their work.
Footnotes
Disclaimer: This article was published in a Supplement supported by a National Science Foundation Smart and Connected Health Grant (SCH) to Principal Investigators Elizabeth Ozer, Ph.D. and James Lester, Ph.D. (IIS-1344670 & IIS-1344803). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.