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This Black History Month, we celebrate 100 years of recognizing Black legacy — Black builders, leaders and innovators who imagined and crafted futures they knew were possible. Their brilliance engineered solutions, healed communities and set policies that saved lives. Today, as digital health and artificial intelligence rapidly reshape our communities, we must ask ourselves what our ancestors would do in this critical moment and answer with action. We must become architects of our digital future.
Our Reality
If we go by the numbers, the story is stark. In the United States, 29% of Black households lack broadband access, and less than half of 1% of venture capital funding reaches Black health technology founders. Black stakeholders are nearly absent from product development, implementation and regulation. The consequences of this exclusion are deadly. In 2019, researchers publishing in Science exposed a widely used hospital algorithm that was less likely to refer Black patients for high-risk care, even when they were equally sick as white patients. Researchers have also revealed AI triage tools systematically underidentified Black patients’ severity, and image recognition systems designed to diagnose skin cancer performed significantly worse on darker skin, missing melanoma in Black patients at alarming rates.
These are evidence of a systemic problem: if you’re not seen in the design, you won’t be protected in the outcome. When digital health is built without Black voices, it replicates the very inequities it claims to address. Biased solutions become entrenched, trust erodes, gaps widen and pathways to harm are created.
Why This Moment Demands Action
Black people — those with origins from sub-Saharan Africa, including African, Black American, Black European, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino and Blasian individuals — have historical, evidence-based reasons to be skeptical of health institutions and research. Communities already struggling with limited access to quality care fall further behind as systems become more sophisticated at excluding them. When digital health tools replicate that exploitation, they confirm those fears.
Despite a lack of institutional support, our ancestors understood that the most powerful innovations come from intimacy with our communities. Those innovations came from people who understood their cultures and were accountable to those they served. Our inheritance is the responsibility to carry on this collective wisdom.
Black innovators globally are leading digital health transformation. In Rwanda, the government partnered with Zipline to deploy the world’s first national drone delivery network for blood and medical supplies, reaching remote communities within minutes and reducing maternal mortality. In Nigeria, platforms like LifeBank connect blood banks with hospitals in real time through technology designed by and for African communities. Black American entrepreneurs are building solutions such as WANDA (Women and Girls Advancing Nutrition Dietetics and Agriculture), addressing health equity through community-led food system transformation that tackles nutrition-related chronic diseases. This collective innovation could transform global health.
Centering Us: Black Diaspora-led AI/Digital Health (BAD) Approach
Our ancestors would create futures reflecting our values. The Black diaspora-led AI/digital health (BAD) approach comprises digital health solutions developed by, with and for Black communities from the very beginning. This is a movement. It means co-design with Black technologists, clinicians, public health leaders and community organizers shaping products from inception. Organizations like Beacon Public Health exemplify this approach with their community-centered digital health initiatives that prioritize local voices in designing chronic disease interventions. It means creating guardrails before harm occurs by resourcing the collective and funding Black innovators at scale to build for futures we haven’t seen yet. Global Black Digital Health reflects cultural contexts, lived experiences and collective wisdom in every algorithm, interface and policy decision.
A diaspora approach recognizes that innovation happens everywhere. Solutions developed in Kigali can inform work in Baltimore. Strategies piloted in Kingston can be adapted to strengthen efforts in Atlanta. Knowledge and resources flow across borders, strengthening the global ecosystem. But local implementation remains critical. Digital health solutions must be relevant, tailored and responsive to the communities and cultures where we live, work and play.
The Choice Before Us: What We Must Do Now
Our ancestors didn’t wait for permission. They built their own. We must do the same. Digital health could widen every gap, or it could close them. Global Black Digital Health depends on whether we become architects of our future or remain its afterthought. The time to choose and act is now. Here’s how we start:
For funders and investors: Permanently commit a portion of digital health portfolios to Black-led and -owned ventures like NoirUnited International that provide wraparound support.
For health systems and tech companies: Conduct algorithmic audits with independent and trusted Black technologists and public health professionals before deployment.
For universities and research institutions: Partner with historically Black colleges and universities, African, Caribbean and other Black diaspora-serving institutions and community organizations as equal collaborators.
For policymakers: Mandate transparency and require equity impact assessments for all digital health tools.
For all of us: Support Black-led and -owned digital health ventures. Demand transparency and accountability. Share knowledge across borders.
For 100 years, Black History Month has reminded us: We always lead. This February, let’s honor that legacy by leading our digital future. We will build and design with our collective wisdom. We will shape digital health because our ancestors and our future demand it.
By Dr. Hassanatu Blake, Rotimi Kukoyi, Queshia Bradley, Dr. Jovonni Spinner, Nassim Ashford, Lanice Williams and Tambra Stevenson
References
Swenson, A. (2025). “US health department unveils strategy to expand its adoption of AI technology.” The Associated Press.
Pew Research Center. (2025). Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/
Katsha, H. (2025). “Black Founders Received Just 0.4% Of All Startup Funding In 2024.” POCIT. https://peopleofcolorintech.com/articles/black-founders-received-just-0-4-of-all-startup-funding-in-2024/
Obermeyer, Z., et al. (2019). “Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations.” Science, 366(6464), 447-453.
Gianfrancesco, M.A., et al. (2018). “Potential biases in machine learning algorithms using electronic health record data.” JAMA Internal Medicine, 178(11), 1544-1547.
Adamson, A.S., & Smith, A. (2018). “Machine learning and health care disparities in dermatology.” JAMA Dermatology, 154(11), 1247-1248.
Source: Published without changes from Washington Informer Newspaper
