Online health communities are often designed for clinical purposes. The user needs within a chronic care community such as cancer are as diverse and complex as their symptom and treatment for latent and long-term effects. While these communities provide the
functional needs such as synchronous and asynchronous communication features, they often fail
to deliver a functional design that is inclusive of all user needs. The ability to inclusively
design online health communities is critical to the overall goal of user satisfaction and in turn
the salutogenesis of the participants. The proactive approach to health and wellness can
be supported and influenced through online communities however; to ensure the broadest reach is
possible to these communities they must be designed to be inclusive. This paper will define a tool
by which online health communities can be designed and evaluated for access and participation while
ensuring the wide range of human diversity. The Framework for Inclusive Design of
Online Communities [FIDOC] will propose the key elements that are necessary to support
the notion of well-being in these chronic care communities. FIDOC addresses the
process by which designers can iteratively work to achieve inclusion when designing online
health communities and offers
recommendations for future research.