Cross Cultural Team Collaboration: Integrating Cultural Humility in mHealth Development and Research

The World Health Organization called for mobile health initiatives to improve population health outcomes, particularly in limited-resource settings. The aim of our study was to reflect upon approaches embedded in cultural humility and recognize areas where improvement was needed in the social innovation collaborative development of an mHealth app to improve hypertension health literacy in India. A qualitative descriptive case study approach was employed to elicit concepts of cultural humility and areas for improvement derived from communications between project stakeholders. Overarching themes included fostering coalescence and strengthening partnerships in addition to multiple subthemes. Enveloping cultural humility in multidisciplinary, interprofessional and cross-cultural healthcare projects and processes is imperative for the development and implementation of successful culturally congruent health initiatives. Team fostering of coalescence and recognizing challenges and adapting to mitigate challenges can strengthen partnerships, a desired consequence of cultural humility.