University of Michigan School of Information doctoral student Yongjie Sha has published her first paper as a UMSI student. The paper researches the role of community-driven care in responding to overdoses and highlights the importance of applying harm reduction principles in designing technologies for communities impacted by substance use.

“Meeting People Where They Are: Building Community-Centered Care with Smartphone-Facilitated Response to Overdoses” was published in the January issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction in collaboration with Alexis Roth, Stephen Lankenau, David G. Schwartz and UMSI assistant professor Gabriela Marcu. The paper earned a GROUP2025 Best Paper honorable mention award. 

The paper focuses on Kensington, Philadelphia, a neighborhood highly impacted by the opioid epidemic. Researchers deployed UnityPhilly, a geolocation-based mobile app that allows laypersons to signal and respond to nearby overdose alerts. Marcu is the lead author of a study that designed UnityPhilly. 

Through the app and a series of interviews, the paper results “suggest the need to rethink health technologies for substance use disorders” and create technologies that “design for a diversity of care paradigms that emphasize building relationships, trust, social support, and sustainability.” 

The publication of a PhD student’s first paper is a big milestone in their career, initiating them into the scholarly community as producers of knowledge. UMSI supports their work as part of our mission to share knowledge.  

Sha is a second-year PhD student at UMSI. Before joining UMSI, she completed an undergraduate degree in social work at the University of Science and Technology Beijing and then a social science degree at the University of Chicago. While collaborating with LGBTQ+ communities in China to explore and design digital interventions to support their sexual and mental health, Sha found her interest in health care and community-based research. 

“My research broadly concerns using technology to support decentralized imaginations of care using community-based approaches,” Sha says. “I'm currently working with community health centers and community-based organizations in Michigan to understand their experiences with social care integration and their perspectives on AI.”

Sha’s advisors include UMSI professor Tiffany Veinot and UMSI assistant professor Megan Threats. She is expected to graduate in 2028. 

“I love how UMSI is interdisciplinary and intellectually stimulating, with a community of friendly, passionate people who truly enjoy what they do,” Sha says. 

Read “Meeting People Where They Are: Building Community-Centered Care with Smartphone-Facilitated Response to Overdoses” in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. The paper is authored by Yongjie Sha, Alexis Roth, Stephen Lankenau, David G. Schwartz and UMSI assistant professor Gabriela Marcu. See the abstract below: 

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 members who engaged in community-based effort to reverse overdoses using a smartphone-based app in an Eastern United States (U.S.) city. Drawing from feminist ethics of care, we identify how the caring practices of community members extend from administering a medical intervention to building trust and support between the care receivers and caregivers in the case of opioid overdose response. Contrary to the predominant patient-centered care paradigm, we emphasize community-centered care, which acknowledges the resistance of individuals and attends to reallocating caring responsibility and building relationships within the community. Our results highlight how trust intersects with social ecologies of care in the highly stigmatized context of opioid overdose and that trustful and less hierarchical relationships are critical sources of care for groups experiencing marginalization. We discuss applying harm reduction principles in designing health technologies for substance use disorders. We also discuss research and design opportunities for community-centered design for marginalized individuals and community caregivers.

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Learn more about UMSI doctoral student Yongjie Sha by visiting her profile. 

Apply to UMSI’s PhD in Information.