iPeer: A Sociotechnical Systems Approach for Helping Veterans with Civilian Reintegration

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Language

eng

Format of Original

9 p.

Publication Date

12-1-2015

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Source Publication

Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development (DEV '15)

Source ISSN

978-1-4503-3490-7

Abstract

The challenges of civilian reintegration can adversely impact the life of veterans. Research shows that peer-mentorship can be very effective for mental health problems. Dryhootch (DH), a veteran-led community organization, has successfully implemented a peer-mentor program for veterans going through civilian reintegration. This article proposes iPeer, a mobile-based augment for the DH peer-mentor program. iPeer tracks the status of the veterans in real-time and presents the status report to veteran mentors (VM) who also went through similar experiences. The participating veterans are assessed semiweekly on their social functioning and risk taking behaviors through surveys. Our major contributions include, (1) proposing a mobile social-computing support for remote and after-hour access of socio-interactive care for veterans going through civilian reintegration, (2) identifying four key issues that need to be addressed when designing such a sociotechnical system for veterans and (3) presenting qualitative evidence about the impact of the technology-augmented process on target-users' experience.

Comments

Published as part of the Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development (DEV '15), 2015: 85-93. DOI.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS