Participatory Animation for Health Promotion in Digital-Based Health Interventions: Viewpoint on Methodology and Application

Digital-based health interventions (DHIs), defined as health services delivered electronically, have demonstrated effectiveness in promoting health outcomes. However, DHIs often suffer from low user retention, a challenge attributed to limited attention to sociocultural determinants and insufficient user engagement strategies. This paper explores participatory animation (PA), a collaborative methodology that engages community partners in co-creating animated content, as a strategy to improve DHI retention and effectiveness. Drawing from existing literature, this viewpoint examines the theoretical foundations and practical affordances of PA for enhancing DHIs. We describe PA as a multistep production process that integrates participant-driven oral and visual design contributions into multimedia outputs for use in DHIs. Here, PA shows promise in producing engaging and culturally resonant content, with the potential to improve intervention uptake and sustain user engagement. Despite these affordances, PA remains underused in health research. Given the growing urgency to develop effective, equitable DHIs, PA offers a novel, community-informed approach for enhancing both design and implementation. This paper positions PA as a methodological frontier for DHI science.