The conversations and collaborations sparked at DPH2026 continue beyond the conference through a series of Frontiers Research Topics.
These collections bring together researchers and practitioners working across key areas of digital public health, creating opportunities to share new evidence, explore emerging challenges and advance research and innovation in the field.
All Research Topics are now OPEN for submissions.
If your work aligns with one of the themes below, we encourage you to explore the Research Topic and submit your latest research.
Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence in Public Health: Challenges, Barriers and Opportunities, Volume II
Exploring how IoT and AI can transform public health through real-time monitoring, disease prevention, surveillance and data-driven decision-making, while addressing challenges around privacy, ethics, infrastructure, accessibility and implementation.
Editors: Dr Eduardo Rodrigues de Lima & Dr Aisha Aldosery
Coordinators: Dr Juliane Regina De Oliveira & Dr Bruno Dutra
A Public Health Workforce for the Digital Age: Digital Skills and Technologies in Public Health Education and Training, Volume II
Advancing digital and data competencies in public health education and training, with a focus on workforce upskilling, effective implementation, equity and preparing professionals for the evolving digital public health landscape.
Editors: Dr Rok Hrzic & Dr Laura Maaß
AI and Digital Public Infrastructure for Public Health Resilience
Public health emergencies, from pandemics to climate-driven health threats, place significant pressure on health systems. This Research Topic considers AI as part of broader Digital Public Infrastructure for public health, rather than as a collection of isolated tools. It focuses on governance and trust, integrated data ecosystems, system integration and new models of human-AI collaboration to support coordinated, adaptive and equitable responses across the full cycle of disruption.
Editors: Dr Dimitrios Kalogeropoulos, Dr Meike Schleiff & Dr Clara A. Jan
Creative and Participatory Approaches for Human-Centred Digital Health: Advancing Innovation through Arts, Co-Creation and Lived Experience
Digital health innovation is advancing rapidly, but technological development alone does not ensure that solutions are meaningful, equitable and sustainable. This Research Topic focuses on creative and participatory approaches to human-centred digital health, including co-design, co-creation, arts-based methods, patient and public involvement, citizen science and community engagement. It highlights approaches that bring lived experience and diverse perspectives into the development, implementation and evaluation of digital health technologies.
Editors: Dr Lars Münter & Dr Carina Dantas
Locating Participation in User-Centric Design in Digital Health Technologies
Digital health technologies are rapidly evolving, yet meaningful participation by patients, communities and publics remains uneven. This Research Topic focuses on how participation can be strengthened and sustained in user-centric design, with attention to inclusion and equity, trust and transparency, lived experience and scientific evidence, participatory methodologies, and sustainability across the innovation lifecycle.
Editors: Dr Stephen Roberts & Dr Femida Gwadry-Sridhar
Coordinator: Emma Back
Harnessing Digital Health Technologies to Strengthen Health Systems, Improve Population Health Outcomes, and Advance Universal Health Coverage in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Low- and middle-income countries face persistent challenges in healthcare access, equity and health system capacity, while digital technologies offer new opportunities to address these gaps. This Research Topic brings together research on how mHealth, telemedicine, AI, digital data systems, surveillance and other digital health innovations can strengthen health systems, improve population health outcomes and support progress towards Universal Health Coverage.
Editors: Dr Sunny Ibeneme & Hillary Kipruto
From Consultation to Leadership: Advancing Youth-led Innovation in Digital Public Health
Young people are among the most active users of digital platforms, yet their involvement in digital public health is often limited to consultation rather than meaningful participation and leadership. This Research Topic focuses on strengthening youth engagement across the design, governance, implementation and evaluation of digital public health initiatives, with attention to lived experience, equity, ethical considerations and youth-led innovation.
Editors: Kathleen Guan, Azza Warraitch & Dr Caroline Figueroa
Large Language Models in Digital Public Health: Data Foundations, Trustworthy Pretraining, and Real-World Applications
Large language models (LLMs) are creating new opportunities for disease surveillance, risk prediction and personalised public health interventions, while raising challenges around data quality, interoperability, bias, privacy and evaluation. This Research Topic brings together work on multimodal data foundations, trustworthy and privacy-preserving LLM development, validation and real-world applications in digital public health.
Editors: Dr Aisha Aldosery, Prof Chunjia Han, Xiang Wu & Yuan Yang
Ethical Challenges of AI, Volume II
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into public health, questions around fairness, transparency, bias, privacy and ethical responsibility become more important. This Research Topic examines the ethical challenges of AI deployment in public health, including ethical frameworks, data privacy, informed consent, health decision-making and approaches to mitigating bias while supporting equitable and effective outcomes.
Editors: Dr Andreea Molnar & Dr Ann Borda
Health Misinformation in the Digital Age: Building Resilience Through Health and Digital Health Literacy
The rapid spread of health misinformation across digital spaces can undermine trust, influence health behaviours and complicate public health responses. This Research Topic focuses on the relationship between health misinformation, digital and health literacy, and information environments, with attention to detection, vulnerable populations, interventions, platform responses, equity, ethics and governance.
Editors: Dr Gayo Diallo, Kathleen Guan & Ouedraogo Ismaila
Explore the Research Topics, share your research and continue the conversation beyond DPH2026. Two additional Research Topics will be published soon – stay tuned for more opportunities to contribute to the growing field of digital public health.