A Scoping Review of Queer Health and Well-Being Technology Research

Technology has and will continue to have a significant impact on queer people’s health and well-being; however, it is not guaranteed that these implementations lead to meaningful advancements. Through a scoping review of 69 queer health technology papers in the ACM Digital Library, we review who queer health and well-being research has centered, what health topics have been targeted, and how technology has been used to address them. Our results identify trends in health foci and intervention implementation strategies, revealing opportunities for upstream efforts that work across individual, community, and structural levels. We therefore argue for greater attention towards structural constructions of queer health and well-being, specific and intentional groupings when developing interventions, and four commitments for designing and carrying out technology-enabled health interventions: commitments to holistic constructions of problem spaces, leverage points, and unintended harms; to reflexive practices for challenging assumptions; to accountability to community needs and flourishing; and to expansion towards situated and relational understandings of health. This work culminates in a framework and research agenda for queer health technology that provides guidance for future interventions.