Placement: Stanford University
Co-Mentors: Lee M. Sanders, MD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics (General Pediatrics), of Health Policy and, by courtesy, of Epidemiology and Population Health
Emma Bruehlman-Senecal, Principal Researcher, HopeLab
Project: Engaging Young People from Diverse Backgrounds to Develop Responsible AI for Mental Health
Caroline Figueroa, MD, PhD, is a 2025–26 Dutch Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice. She is an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, where she leads the Research on Inclusion, Social Justice, and Equity in Digital Health (RISE) group. Her work focuses on making digital mental health solutions — such as apps and chatbots — safe, effective, and accessible, particularly for youth and women. Figueroa’s research on digital health equity has directly informed policy documents by global organizations such as the World Health Organization and the United Nations, and has been published in leading journals including Lancet Digital Health, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, and Human Brain Mapping.
Figueroa is a medical doctor with a PhD in the neuroscience of depression from the University of Amsterdam and the University of Oxford; she also has several years of experience in clinical psychiatry. Before joining TU Delft, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, she serves as an expert consultant on gender equality for a European app assessment label, is an advisory board member of the Dutch AI Health Equity Lab, and codirects the Mental Health and Tech Special Interest Group at TU Delft.
Project Overview: Young people from marginalized backgrounds face significant barriers to accessing mental health care. While AI-driven mental health apps have the potential to expand access, current tools often fail to meet the needs of diverse youth and risk exacerbating existing disparities. This project will explore how to meaningfully engage marginalized adolescents and young adults (ages 12–25) in the design, development, and implementation of AI-powered mental health technologies to promote greater equity in digital care. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research will combine analysis of national survey data with focus groups involving diverse youth in the U.S., alongside interviews with developers, researchers, and policymakers. The goal is to identify effective strategies and policy recommendations for inclusive youth engagement in digital mental health innovation. Insights from the U.S. context will inform both U.S. and Dutch efforts to ensure AI tools are developed in partnership with the young people they aim to serve.