ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
This article is part of the Research TopicEmpowering Public Health Through Citizen Science: A Focus on Enhanced ParticipationView all articles
Rethinking Participation: Design Studios for Health as a Scalable Citizen Science Framework for Health Equity
Provisionally accepted
- Arizona State University, Tempe, United States
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Word count: 205 Introduction The Design Studios for Health (DSH) framework is a participatory, partnership-driven model designed to foster equitable collaboration between community members and researchers to address diverse health priorities. This study evaluates outcomes from 11 DSH sessions conducted over two years with historically underserved communities, focusing on key indicators of engagement: collaboration, facilitator performance, participant willingness to support each other, group cohesion, and trust. Grounded in design thinking and community-based participatory research (CBPR), the DSH model uses an iterative structure of 2–3 sessions per health topic, supporting sustained, meaningful engagement. Results indicate later DSHs, such as Studios Five and Two, demonstrated significant improvements in collaboration (M = 4.7), group cohesion (M = 4.6), and trust (M = 4.8), compared to earlier sessions. Qualitative data emphasized the value of iterative engagement, allowing participants to co-develop interventions and deepen connections. The Women's Brain Health studio highlighted the framework's flexibility and scalability across diverse health issues. The DSH framework demonstrates strong potential to advance health equity by fostering trust, co-creation, and sustained partnerships with underserved communities. Its adaptive, session-based design builds capacity for shared decision-making and culturally relevant intervention development. As a replicable and equity-oriented participatory approach, DSH contributes meaningfully to the evolving field of community-driven public health research.
Keywords: Community Engagement, academic-community partnership, co-creation, user-centeredhealth solutions, Underrepresented populations, health equity
Received: 07 Aug 2025; Accepted: 07 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Khatib, Shah and Buman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Maissa Khatib, mkhatib2@asu.edu
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