Launching AI and Health Equity Research

An Introduction to AI, Health Equity Research and Grant Writing

Course Overview

Launching AI and Health Equity Research is a course offered by the AIM-AHEAD Program for AI Readiness (PAIR) that provides learners with an introduction to AI, to Health Equity Research, and to the Grant Writing process. Experts present their research in these modules on topics including AI and Equity, AI for Precision Medicine, Natural Language Processing, Deploying Explainable AI, Human-AI Collaboration, and Grant Writing. Learners will analyze the impact of AI/ML on healthcare, examine challenges in AI and machine learning related to health equity, explore techniques to address disparities in healthcare data, and develop strategies for a successful grant application.

This course was developed from lectures presented to awardees of the PAIR program, which leverages AIM-AHEAD’s capabilities to jumpstart AI research for health equity at minority-serving institutions (MSIs) with inadequate resources. The program aims to build a strong foundation for sustainable research success at these institutions. PAIR connects institutions with AIM-AHEAD resources, AI/ML and health equity experts, and grant-writing coaches to help establish AI/ML health equity research labs that host cross-disciplinary teams for research projects and grant writing.


Funding Information

Prime Award Number: 3OT2OD032581-01S1

Course Directors

Dr. Gordon Gao - Guodong (Gordon) Gao, PhD, MBA, is a Professor at the Carey Business School of Johns Hopkins University and co-director of the Center for Digital Health and AI (CDHAI). Before joining Carey, he was the Dean’s Professor of AI in Healthcare, co-director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS), and the director of the Health Insights AI Lab, at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Gao’s research interests include Big Data and AI in health care, health IT, and quality transparency. His research has been funded by NSF, NIH and AHRQ. Dr. Gao is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award.

Dr. Harlan P. Jones - Dr. Jones conducts biomedical and health disparity research to identify mechanisms of disease pathogenesis involved in cancer, infectious, and inflammatory diseases that disproportionately affect underrepresented minority populations. He currently serves as Director for the Institute for Health Disparities at the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC).

Dr. Toufeeq Syed - Toufeeq Ahmed Syed, PhD is an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Education Informatics at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston. He is also an Associate Professor at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston. Dr. Syed is a computer scientist by training with expertise in Artificial Intelligence, education technology, social network analysis, student portfolio systems, natural language processing, information retrieval, data integration, ontologies, and adaptive recommender systems. Syed Lab is leading Precision Education in Healthcare and Mentoring Networks research by developing innovative AI-based national online platforms (National Research Mentoring Network, AIM-AHEAD Connect) to deliver personalized education, mentoring, and career growth, thereby enabling intervention-based research and increasing the nation's biomedical and Artificial Intelligence workforce.

Presenters

Dr. Roy Adams - Dr. Roy Adams is an Assistant Professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine working on machine learning and statistical methods for electronic health record data as part of the Richman Family Precision Medicine Center of Excellence. 

Dr. Riyaz Basha - Dr. Basha is the Vice Chair for Research, Pediatrics and Women's Health at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. His research is in the area of experimental therapeutics.

Dr. Chellu S. Chetty - Dr. Chetty is the Associate Vice President of Research & Sponsored programs and a Distinguished Professor of Biology at Savannah State University. Currently, he is also directing NIH-funded MBRS and NSF-funded HBCU-UP Programs.

Dr. Arya Farahi - Dr. Farahi is an Assistant Professor at University of Texas at Austin and is an active member of several international projects and collaborations, including the Dark Energy Survey (DES), the COsmostatistics INitiative (COIN), and XMM-XXL Consortium.

Dr. Anjalie Field - Dr. Field is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and a member of the Center for Language and Speech Processing whose primary interests include using natural language processing (NLP) to model social science concepts. 

Dr. Elham Hatef - Dr. Hatef is a preventive medicine-public health physician and clinical informatician who focuses on population health, social and behavioral determinants of health, and health disparities using health IT and informatics.

Dr. Harlan Jones - Dr. Jones conducts biomedical and health disparity research to identify mechanisms of disease pathogenesis involved in cancer, infectious, and inflammatory diseases that disproportionately affect underrepresented minority populations.  He currently serves as Director of the Center for Diversity and International Programs at UNTHSC.

Dr. Angi Liu - Dr. Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Whiting School of Engineering of the Johns Hopkins University. 

Dr. Nestoras Mathioudakis - Dr. Mathioudakis is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-directs the Baltimore Metropolitan Diabetes Regional Partnership.

Dr. Jamie S. Rubin - Dr. Rubin is currently the Vice Chair for Investigator Development in the Department of Medicine where she also holds a faculty position.

Dr. Dakuo Wang - Dr. Wang is an Associate Professor at Northeastern University, jointly appointed at Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the College of Arts, Media and Design.

Dr. Weiguang Wang - Dr. Wang is an Assistant Professor at the Simon Business School, University of Rochester, specializing in Computers and Information Systems.