Project seeks to leverage AI to advance health equity
Chaminade University is a proud collaborator with the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) at the University of Hawai’i on cutting-edge work designed to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to advance health equity and research diversity in Hawai’i and the Pacific.
Chaminade will contribute to a JABSOM-led project that recently received a $500,000 Phase II award from the National Institutes of Health’s AIM-AHEAD (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity) program.
The work is aimed at using AI to enhance public health and reduce disparities, and the Hawai’i researchers plan to do that by deploying student researchers for new opportunities and “skilling up” AI experts so they can then serve as “navigators” for key stakeholders.
Dr. Alex Stokes is the principal investigator of the project at JABSOM and will collaborate closely with Dr. Helen Turner, research director at Chaminade’s CIFAL Honolulu Center, and her team.
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Turner said Chaminade is a key partner with the University of Hawai’i and the national AIM-AHEAD consortium on the ARCH project, which stands for AI Resource Concierge for Healthcare.
“The ‘resource concierge’ is a web gateway for researchers, community, healthcare providers and policymakers to access AI/ML tools, datasets and the training and technical assistance needed to use them in support of their missions in health equity,” Turner said.
Turner added the JABSOM and Chaminade teams implemented a Phase I ARCH pilot in 2023-24 that offered AI resources to healthcare stakeholders, conducted a landscape needs assessment survey, and trained a new class of “AI navigators” to assist healthcare users in understanding the potential of AI to reduce health equity.
The team also started proof-of-concept research projects applying AI to health equity challenges, such as diabetes and PTSD, with collaborators from Hawai’i, American Samoa and Aotearoa.
“The successful ARCH-Hawaii pilot was selected for a competitive ‘Phase II’ to take it national, which is a wonderful development ” said Turner, adding the Chaminade team—which in addition to Turner, as principal investigator of an NSF Alliances grant, also includes Dr. Catherine Brockway and Connor Flynn—will contribute to the next phase of the AIM AHEAD project by implementing a national training curriculum (deploying the CIFAL Center’s UN short course model) to “skill up” AI navigators.
Those navigators will then help stakeholders to apply AI to their health equity projects.
Additionally, the grant will help support new opportunities for student researchers, including internships, a “health equity hackathon,” and other health equity projects during the school year.
Interested in learning more about the grants mentioned in this article?
- The NIH AIM-AHEAD award number is OT2OD032581-01 and Stokes ([email protected]) is the principal investigator.
- The NSF INCLUDES ALL-SPICE Alliance award number is: NSF HRD-2217242 and Turner ([email protected]) is the principal investigator.