On June 25th, 2026, UHC Co-Directors Ana Diez Roux and Usama Bilal were in Washington for a Workshop on AI/ML Tools, Cross-Sector Data, and Community Expertise organized by the Population Health Improvement Roundtable of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). Diez Roux joined as Co-Chair of the Roundtable, and Bilal participated as an invited panelist in a session on new methods to create and curate public health data.
Titled “The Data Revolution and Population Health: Tech Tools, Cross-Sector Data, and Community Expertise,” this hybrid workshop provided researchers and public health officials with new approaches to population and cross-sector health data, focusing on access, governance, privacy, community contributions, data ownership/responsibility, security, analysis, and the use of AI in these efforts.
As Roundtable Co-Chair, Ana Diez Roux launched the workshop. Usama Bilal joined as a panelist for the second workshop session, which focused on new methods for creating and curating public health data. Bilal focused largely on small-area data, including neighborhoods. He talked about the importance of using context-specific data when determining the need for interventions. He used the example of the relationship between high heat and mortality outcomes in the US, noting that while areas in states like Arizona might be more recognized for their higher temperatures overall, large heat-related mortality occurs in places that are less adapted to it, like in the Pacific Northwest, where air conditioning is less available.
This kind of research is useful to generate hypotheses about specific areas in our cities where interventions may be most impactful. For example, an intervention to improve air conditioning availability may be targeted to areas with either lower prevalence of air conditioning or where energy cost burdens are highest. New innovative methods to create this kind of data have been proposed recently, and may help local organizations in their targeting efforts.
Learn more and watch the full workshop below!