Design and Development of the SATA Mobile Health App: A Community-Engaged Digital Health Innovation for Sickle Cell Disease

Background

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a chronic inherited blood disorder that disproportionately affects Black and globally underserved populations. Individuals living with SCD often experience fragmented care, missed appointments, limited psychosocial support, and high reliance on emergency services—contributing to persistent health disparities. Although digital health tools have the potential to address these challenges, few platforms are specifically designed with community input or adapted for both U.S. and low-resource global settings.

Methods

This project designed and developed the SATA (Sickle Cell Advocacy Tools and Assistance) mobile application, a community-engaged digital platform created to support care adherence, advocacy, and quality of life among individuals living with SCD. We utilized a health equity and community-engaged framework, SATA was developed using an iterative, stakeholder-informed process involving individuals with lived SCD experience, community organizations, and Tekwetu technology partner.

Results

We developed an app design that prioritizes cultural relevance, usability, and accessibility while safeguarding privacy and safety. Core features include: (1) Health Information such daily mood tracking, pain level entries, medication management, and medical appointment reminders, (2) Community Features such as stories/posts and chat messaging, (3) Geolocation tagging (when enabled) for finding nearby healthcare facilities, and initiating help requests or offering assistance through our Warrior Connect feature, (4) Healthcare Information which includes hospital ratings and reviews of healthcare facilities and (5) Wellness feature that includes mediations games to reduce stress.

Conclusions

The SATA mobile health app represents an innovative, equity-centered approach to addressing structural and social barriers in SCD care. By centering community voice at the design stage and emphasizing scalability to underserved populations, this work lays the foundation for future implementation and evaluation studies. SATA demonstrates how community-engaged digital innovation can contribute to reducing health disparities and advancing chronic disease management.

SATA mHealth App