Survivor-U: A Mobile Application Designed with/for African American Cancer Survivors

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of mobile applications to support cancer treatment, decision making and survivorship. Whether developed by healthcare organizations, academic institutions or others, these applications provide accessible forms of support and information to those affected by cancer.  While many of these applications are designed to reach wide audiences of cancer survivors, very few are developed specifically for cancer survivors from racial/ethnic minority populations.  With the growing number of cancer survivors of color in the United States, mobile applications tailored to address the unique cultural needs of African American cancer survivors are warranted. Those that include African American cancer survivors in the design and testing of these applications further increases the value-added to these health tools.

Survivor- U is a mobile application designed to support African American cancer survivorship. Created with and for African American cancer survivors, Survivor-U addresses information and support needs identified by cancer survivors in a culturally tailored way. Describing the rationale, design and development of this mobile application, this project provides a way of thinking about the cultural tailoring of mobile applications as health tools and the benefits of developing tools not just with end users in mind, but actually with end users as co-developers.

As a community-based applied research project engaging African American cancer survivors, Public Health researchers, and Information Technology specialists, this project further underscores the importance of considering culture as unique design dimension important in developing potable cancer survivorship tools for diverse cancer survivor audiences.