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Environments by Design: Crowdsourcing for Social Good, Health and Well-Being

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Health Behavior, Chronic Disease and Health Promotion".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2023) | Viewed by 2490

Special Issue Editors

Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia
Interests: digital health informatics; emerging technology and participatory science; environmental health; artificial intelligence and open knowledge systems; cultural informatics (digital heritage)
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Guest Editor
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia
Interests: smart cities; e-learning; e-health

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are in an age in which we are witnessing a growing convergence of physical, virtual, and knowledge spaces that are shaped by collaborative design to promote social good and broader health and well-being benefits. Purposive participation is bringing together the public, governments, and researchers around common goals of a social good – a positive and pro-active environment that benefits the largest number of people in the largest possible way.   

The rise of crowdsourcing platforms and online communities has accelerated ways of participating and designing innovative solutions using forms of collective intelligence to share challenges. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, geographically distributed groups engaged in online crowdsourcing and civic platforms to generate research, exchange knowledge, and jointly problem-solve. 

There are also critical gaps and disadvantages for those who do not have the resources to participate (e.g., lack access to digital infrastructure), low digital literacy, or those who are marginalized in governance or decision making.  

Environments by design are ideally about global and local citizens uniting to unlock the potential of individuals, communities, digital technology, information, and collaboration that equitably advances positive societal impact, health and well-being.   

We invite papers for this Special Issue that combine a high academic standard and focus on qualitative or quantitative research, case studies or perspectives which address the topic, and those which illustrate crowd participation or co-creation methods and convergence(s) across physical and digital knowledge spaces would greatly enhance the Issue.  Possible topics can include: 

  • Crowdsourced design of virtual or hybrid environments for social good, health and well-being;
  • Gamified crowdsourcing and serious games for environmental, global or public health;
  • Crowdsourced data and AI for environmental, global or public health;  
  • Crowdsourced digital humanities, social or health innovations;
  • Crowdsourcing, citizen science, online communities, and micro-volunteering platforms supporting social good, health and well-being;
  • Civic technologies for social good, health and well-being; 
  • Digital literacy and crowdsourced participation; 
  • Ethical aspects of environments by design.  

Dr. Ann Borda
Dr. Andreea Molnar
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • social good
  • crowdsourcing
  • citizen science
  • participatory design
  • public and environmental health
  • health and well-being
  • serious games
  • digital social innovation
  • civic technologies
  • digital literacy

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 2992 KiB  
Communication
Meet the Medicines—A Crowdsourced Approach to Collecting and Communicating Information about Essential Medicines Online
by Yaela N. Golumbic, Kymberley R. Scroggie, Ciara R. Kenneally, Jiarun Lin, Mitchell T. Blyth, Genevieve Firmer, Peter J. Rutledge and Alice Motion
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(5), 4242; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20054242 - 27 Feb 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1396
Abstract
The World Health Organization (WHO) maintains a list of medicines and medical devices, essential medicines, that should be available to everyone, to form a functioning healthcare system. Yet, many of these medicines remain out of reach for people around the world. One [...] Read more.
The World Health Organization (WHO) maintains a list of medicines and medical devices, essential medicines, that should be available to everyone, to form a functioning healthcare system. Yet, many of these medicines remain out of reach for people around the world. One significant barrier to improving the accessibility of essential medicines is a paucity of information about both the extent and causes of this problem. E$$ENTIAL MEDICINE$ (E$$) is a citizen science project designed to investigate this deficit of information by recruiting members of the public to find, validate, compile and share information on essential medicines through an open, online database. Herein, we report an approach to crowdsourcing both the collection of information on the accessibility of essential medicines and the subsequent communication of these findings to diverse audiences. The Meet the Medicines initiative encourages members of the public to share information from the E$$ database, in a short video format appropriate for social media. This communication details the design and implementation of our crowdsourced approach and strategies for recruiting and supporting participants. We discuss data on participant engagement, consider the benefits and challenges of this approach and suggest ways to promote crowdsourcing practices for social and scientific good. Full article
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