*Purpose: Advances in eHealth have created opportunities to reach vulnerable populations, however, eHealth strategies could paradoxically increase health disparities if vulnerable individuals lack technology access or skills needed to navigate eHealth programs. The purpose of this study is to inform the viability of a future eHealth intervention by determining access to, use of, and attitudes toward using digital technologies among vulnerable populations at our center.

*Methods: Using data previously collected between September 2018 through September 2019 from 3 single group pre-post studies of animation-based education designed to promote kidney transplant access, we analyzed baseline technology access and use data, and post-intervention intent to view or to recommend to others between patients vulnerable to health disparities (low income, limited health literacy, or black race) and other patients undergoing kidney transplant evaluation at a single center.

*Results: Fifty-six percent of participants (94/168) were members of a vulnerable population (limited health literacy, annual income < US$30,000, or black race). Over 96% of participants rated the animation-based education highly on intent to view (98.3% for vulnerable participants vs 94.2% for non-vulnerable participants, p=0.592) or intent to recommend to others (98.3% vs 96.0%, p=0.463) [Table 1]. Vulnerable participants were less likely to own a computer (50.0% vs 72.6%, p=0.003), send or receive email (71.3% vs 84.9%, p=0.037), and browse the internet for transplant information (52.2% vs 74.3%, p=0.004). There were no between-group differences in terms of owning a smartphone (78.4% vs 79.5%, p=0.752) and sending or receiving text messages (80.9% vs 86.3%, p=0.350). More than half of individuals in both groups previously watched videos online about kidney transplantation (50.6% vs 52.9%, p=0.768).

*Conclusions: Kidney transplant candidates who are vulnerable to health disparities have less access to and use of computers compared with non-vulnerable candidates but have similar smartphone ownership, text message usage, and patterns of online video watching. Vulnerable and non-vulnerable kidney transplant candidates have positive attitudes toward adoption of animation-based education.

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