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Bridging the Health Disparity of African Americans Through Conversational Agents

Published: 17 November 2020 Publication History

Abstract

African Americans have faced health disparities in terms of access to health care and treatment of illnesses. The novel coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic exacerbates those disparities caused by limited access to medical care and healthy lifestyles, vulnerability to misleading information, and mistrust of the medical profession, all of which disproportionately affect the African American population in terms of infection and mortality. Conversational agents (CAs) are a technological intervention with the potential to narrow the disparities because they make health care more accessible, are effective in disseminating health information among a population with low health literacy, and can increase users’ trust in health information. However, designing CAs for this population presents challenges with regard to embodying the African American culture into CAs and addressing privacy and security concerns. This commentary discusses some advantages and challenges of using CAs to help African Americans protect themselves against coronavirus disease 2019, and calls for more research in this area.

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cover image Digital Government: Research and Practice
Digital Government: Research and Practice  Volume 2, Issue 1
COVID-19 Commentaries
January 2021
116 pages
EISSN:2639-0175
DOI:10.1145/3434277
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 17 November 2020
Online AM: 30 October 2020
Accepted: 01 October 2020
Revised: 01 September 2020
Received: 01 July 2020
Published in DGOV Volume 2, Issue 1

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Author Tags

  1. COVID-19
  2. african american population
  3. chatbot
  4. conversational agent
  5. health disparity
  6. marginalized population

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  • (2024)Chatbots: An Overview of Current Issues and ChallengesAdvances in Information and Communication10.1007/978-3-031-53960-2_7(84-104)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2024
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