{"doi":"10.2196/30605","title":"A Program to Improve Digital Access and Literacy Among Community Stakeholders: Cohort Study","abstract":"BACKGROUND: For many research teams, the role of community stakeholders is critical. However, community stakeholders, especially those in low-income settings, are at risk of being excluded from research and community engagement initiatives during and after the COVID-19 pandemic because of the rapid transition to digital operations. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to describe the implementation and feasibility of a program called Addressing the Digital Divide to Improve Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, which was designed to address barriers to technology use, and to examine changes in participants' perceived comfort with digital technology before and after the program. METHODS: To promote full engagement, we worked with 20 existing community leaders to cocreate a training course on using digital technology. We assessed the frequency of technology use and comfort with technology through an adapted 8-item version of the Functional Assessment of Comfort Employing Technology Scale and used the Wilcoxon signed-rank test for survey analysis. We also conducted a focus group session with 10 participants and then performed reflective journaling and content analysis to determine emergent themes. RESULTS: We found that the program was feasible to implement and worthwhile for participants (15/16, 94%). After the program, the participants perceived an increase in the frequency of technology use (z=2.76, P=.006). The participants reported that the program was successful because of the technology training program, but recommended that the program have a slower pace and include a helpline number that they could call with questions. CONCLUSIONS: Future programs should consider that populations with low literacy view technology training as a core element to decreasing technology disparity. This study demonstrates that through low-cost input, community members can be provided the resources and training needed to virtually participate in research studies or community engagement initiatives.","journal":"JMIR Formative Research","year":2021,"id":183552,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":13,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9543,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":737301,"name":"Yeukai Nyikadzino","orcid":"0000-0002-1903-3123","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":367219,"name":"Kelly T. Gleason","orcid":"0000-0002-4203-6517","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":737300,"name":"Brittany Drazich","orcid":"0000-0003-0111-6868","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":43,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:48:22.008011Z","pmid":"34757316","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}