Citizen Social Science in Global Health

Citizen Science – engaging community members directly in collecting and analyzing research data at scale – has many advantages for the goal of promoting sustainable, equitable health solutions. It allows us to do more as social scientists who study health, designing and implementing projects at scale that are otherwise not possible. It also opens more non-scientists to the goals, means, and limits of the scientific research process. And it keeps us as researchers intimately connected with and accountable to communities at the same time, expanding the potential to align projects to their needs and better translate findings back.  Citizen Science has been successfully deployed in many projects in the natural and biological sciences, including projects related to global health. But, there are currently few models for how to deploy social science research with citizens. CSIGH is an effort to do just that – test new approaches and figure out what works best under what conditions. Each year we team with different collaborators inside and outside ASU to design and implement new approaches to doing citizen social science in global health, together building over time what we hope is a better tool kit for all.