Spectrum CTSA Pilot funding leads to OurVoice global citizen science
research initiative and network

Local physical and social environmental conditions impact people’s ability to live healthy and vital lives. However, many individuals and communities lack a voice in or means of addressing local unhealthy conditions affecting them.

Two Spectrum CTSA pilots successfully sought to address this issue by developing the 4-step Our Voice citizen science process with an accompanying easy-to-use mobile app. Our Voice is an evidence-based, resource-efficient method for capturing the “lived experience” of residents from diverse communities and backgrounds to inform and drive community change at environmental and policy levels in the service of health equity. It has catalyzed more than 75 community-designed projects around the world, addressing dozens of local issues impacting health and reaching half a million people. Through numerous partnering organizations and universities, this method has been readily translatable to a range of populations as well as problem areas, such as:

"The Our Voice citizen science project demonstrates the short- and long-term impacts of our CTSA-funded pilot projects,” stated Dr. Ruth O’Hara, Director of the Spectrum CTSA and School of Medicine Senior Associate Dean of Research. “This team leveraged the initial CTSA funding to produce tremendous impact on populations around the globe."

• Addressing gender-based violence and gender equality on college campuses

• Supporting the control of mosquito-transmitted infectious diseases in developing nations

• Improving pedestrian safety and safer routes to schools

• Helping universities and communities become more “age-friendly”

• Facilitating social connectedness, mental health, and wellbeing among vulnerable populations

“The Our Voice citizen science project demonstrates the short- and long-term impacts of our CTSA-funded pilot projects,” stated Dr. Ruth O’Hara, Director of the Spectrum CTSA and School of Medicine Senior Associate Dean of Research. “This team leveraged the initial CTSA funding to produce tremendous impact on populations around the globe.”

Led by Dr. Abby King, the David and Susan Heckerman Professor and Professor of Epidemiology & Population Health and of Medicine, the CTSA-funded pilot projects (2010 and 2012) supported initial T1 preclinical studies to develop the citizen science methods, then T2 studies that successfully tested the methods and allowed the team to secure a growing amount of research and community funding for larger-scale testing from NIH, NSF, and private foundations. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funds for T3 dissemination & implementation aimed at building a vibrant global research network, which allowed the team to begin to capture larger scale (T4) outcomes and impacts. Their Discovery Tool data collection mobile app technology and accompanying facilitated Our Voice process is currently being disseminated nationally and internationally through a project-based curation process supported by a Stanford collaborative agreements mechanism.

“This line of programmatic research has become over time a major source of creative research projects that have allowed me and my team to significantly broaden our level and breadth of community-based impacts to advance health equity locally, nationally, and globally,” states Dr. King. “It also has had wonderful impacts on my life personally, in the form of incredible collaborations around the world.”

"Our Voice" Data at a Glance:

    >75 community designed projects to date

    >2,500 data collection "walks"

    >15,000 photos and narratives collected

    >40 peer-reviewed articles

    >500,000 people reached

Dr. King’s Stanford faculty collaborators include Lisa Goldman Rosas, Michael Baiocchi, Desiree LaBeaud, Christopher Gardner, and Marcia Stefanick (School of Medicine), and Scott Delp (School of Engineering).

To learn more about the Our Voice Initiative and its outcomes, visit the Our Voice website.