AI, Public Health & Equity

September 2023

Welcome to the
MPH Monthly!

MPH@Simmons alum, students, faculty and friends:

Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! Even though one month is not enough, we've been appreciating these weeks to especially uplift and honor the cultures and contributions of Hispanic and Latin Americans.

As the seasons change, the MPH program also changes and grows. Professor Meenakshi Verma-Agrawal has left the program. While we wish her all the best in her new endeavors, we also look forward to future collaborations to continue the work of advancing racial justice. While welcoming new public health department chair Dr. Dawna Thomas, we are also searching for a tenure-track assistant professor and an assistant professor of practice to join us to work with a group of students committed to social justice and to usher the program to exciting heights.

Many of you have probably been keeping your ears open to the news about artificial intelligence, AI, especially large language models like Open AI's ChatGPT. It’s done some impressive things, like crushing the bar exam and generating mindbending art (see left). But it has also raised concerns, as in the case of New York Times reporter Kevin Roose who was left "deeply unsettled" after a few sessions with Microsoft's AI-powered Bing search engine and the anticipated threat to both skilled and creative work alike.

Focusing the lens a little bit, there are implications of AI in public health and in health equity that we should be keeping in mind. AI models can be a boon to public health when it comes to diagnosis, prediction, and prevention, offering capacity where public health often lacks resources. However, the potential for misinformation, biased surveillance, breaches of privacy or other practices that run counter to public health ethics and the mission of social justice should not be underestimated.

Thanks for reading,

Leigh Haynes (Interim Program Director)

& Nat Thomson (Graduate Student Assistant)

In The News

The image and the image in the previous section were both generated using Canva's AI powered text-to-image software.

September's Topic: Public Health & Artificial Intelligence

For this month's newsletter, the time felt right for us in the MPH program to jump into the conversation around artificial intelligence through our lens of health, social justice and equity. Globally and nationally, the enthusiasm and appetite for new technologies has seemingly never felt higher. However, in the effort to "not get left behind" we've seen colossal technology flops blindly pushed forward for capitalistic ends, be it Theranos, FTX, NFTs or otherwise. In many ways, while the appetite is high, one could argue the stakes are just as high if not higher in terms of public health. In that spirit, we wanted to highlight some even-handed thinking and research around AI. This is especially important, considering the current media environment where it can often feel like many are skipping over the "cautionary tale" elements of the coverage and letting their imaginations run wild. We're dreamers too, but sometimes when you have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.

A few things to consider...

While AI models and their potential can tend to dominate the discourse, researchers at Texas A&M's School of Public Health are thinking about how to imbue AI applications with legally enforecable guardrails that help ensure AI will operate in service of justice and equity and not against these principles, which may or may not be part of the programming. “We can and should strive to do better than what is minimally acceptable," says Jennifer Wagner, JD, of Penn State, who was quoted in their piece.
Tempering the excitement and feelings of progress that have come along with adopting and deploying the latest and greatest, the risk of unintended consequences remains ever present inside and outside of the public health sphere . A recent study from the Swiss Department of Health Sciences and Technology focuses in on this "however..." aspect of AI, detailing how overlooked ethical, societal and privacy oriented issues and concerns translate into the potential for a massive undermining of the true potential of the software.
Rolling Stone profiled a group of women of color who have consistently called out the clear bias inherently passed from creator to software in the AI sphere. The article touches on how AI and facial recognition software interacts differently with people of marginalized identities as Joy Buolamwini's Algorithmic Justice League emphasise. It also underscores how merely bringing up these very clear-cut issues in the software inherently puts your career at risk as was the case with Timnit Gebru who Google forced out due to her research challenging the ethics of AI.
Naomi Klein leaves us with a warning that as CEOs personify AI in referring to errors they make as "hallucinations", we must remember the true hallucination is that AI can solve big problems like poverty, the climate crisis, or broken governance. In order for that to happen the economic and social order under which we live must change from one driven by accumulation of capital and power among a few to one with the purpose of meeting of human needs and protecting planetary systems that support all life.

What We're Watching & Listening To

If you might be interested in the inner workings of AI, Vox's Unexplainable podcast spoke to researchers who explain a lack of clarity around how exactly AI works and how it can solve problems in ways we might not expect...or like.
In this TEDx Talk from 2017, you can watch Dr. Joy Buolamwini share her early discovery of bias in algorithms as a grad student at MIT working with facial analysis software and how she started down the path to amplify the problem and advocate for change.
Business media outlet Bloomberg recently hosted tech executives from three massive businesses in discussion of how they will put AI to work in their companies. Reflecting Naomi Klein's take on hallucinations, this is an informative listen in terms of what's not said as much as what is said. Sometimes a panel thumbnail is worth a thousand words (see bottom left).
Finally, for those looking to add just one more Public Health oriented podcast to their pod-catcher app, we suggest America Dissected from Crooked Media, where Dr. Abdul El-Sayed explores health through a broad, justice-oriented lens.

Alumni Spotlight

Jeanmerli Gonzales, MPH

Graduating from our program in 2022, Jeanmerli Gonzales now serves as the Program Director for REACH LoWELL, a CDC funded program in Lowell, MA which was designed to support the community in reducing health disparities and applies a culturally responsive approach. Reflecting a critique that the Simmons MPH program analyzes, Jeanmerli says that "often times, agencies fund programs that focus on behavioral change models using reactive approaches."

About her work at REACH LoWell Jeanmerli says, "The most interesting part of my job is that I get to work with a team and dedicate staff towards improving Lowell's social determinants of health infrastructure itself, while also focusing on the causes of disease and upstream implications." One of the MPH program's goals is to train a public health workforce that looks to address root causes of health inequities. So, we're excited to see students like Jeanmerli deepen their health equity work in careers that contribute to sustainable change in communities.

Congratulations, Jeanmerli! The Simmons MPH community is very proud of your accomplishments.

Events On Our Radar

October 4 at Harvard Law Library – At this Harvard Law School Library Book Talk (1-2pm ET) Alicia Yamin will discuss her book, When Misfortune Becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality, 2nd ed., with panelists Aziza Ahmed (Boston University Law School), Jesse Bump (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health), and Louise Ivers (Harvard Global Health Institute).

October 6 hybrid event – The Simmons MPH program hosts a public lecture entitled Barriers to Health Equity: Navigating the Intersections of Colonization, Migration, and Racism in Boston's Cabo Verdean Community. This is a hybrid event in person and online participation; register for online participation.

October 7 in Washington, DC – Dr. Thema Bryant, President of the American Psychological Association, is hosting Psychology for the People: Healing from Trauma, Grief, and Oppression. This summit is organized to uplift community healing and thriving in honor of World Mental Health Day.

October 12-15, Marrakech, Morocco – Social movements, trade unions, people's organizations and others are gathering to call for debt and financial justice in a counter-summit to the 2023 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

November 12-15 in Atlanta, GA – Registration is open for the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting . People can also register for the virtual component which begins on November 9.

We want to hear from you!

Please let us know what you'd like to see in this monthly update! Write to leigh.haynes@simmons.edu with suggestions.

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