搜索结果：Frontiers in environmental health

Living environments play a vital role in the prevalence and progression of diseases, and understanding their impact on patient's health status becomes increasingly crucial for developing AI models. However, due to the lack of long-term and fine-grained spatial and temporal data in public and population health studies, most existing studies fail to incorporate environmental data, limiting the models' performance and real-world application. To address this shortage, we developed SatHealth, a novel dataset combining multimodal spatiotemporal data, including environmental data, satellite images, all-disease prevalences estimated from medical claims, and social determinants of health (SDoH) indicators. We conducted experiments under two use cases with SatHealth: regional public health modeling and personal disease risk prediction. Experimental results show that living environmental information can significantly improve AI models' performance and temporal-spatial generalizability on various tasks. Finally, we deploy a web-based application to provide an exploration tool for SatHealth and one-click access to both our data and regional environmental embedding to facilitate plug-and-play ut

Precision health, increasingly supported by digital technologies, is a domain of research that broadens the paradigm of precision medicine, advancing everyday healthcare. This vision goes hand in hand with the groundbreaking advent of artificial intelligence (AI), which is reshaping the way we diagnose, treat, and monitor both clinical subjects and the general population. AI tools powered by machine learning have shown considerable improvements in a variety of healthcare domains. In particular, reinforcement learning (RL) holds great promise for sequential and dynamic problems such as dynamic treatment regimes and just-in-time adaptive interventions in digital health. In this work, we discuss the opportunity offered by AI, more specifically RL, to current trends in healthcare, providing a methodological survey of RL methods in the context of precision and digital health. Focusing on the area of adaptive interventions, we expand the methodological survey with illustrative case studies that used RL in real practice. This invited article has undergone anonymous review and is intended as a book chapter for the volume "Frontiers of Statistics and Data Science" edited by Subhashis Ghosha

The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (OHIE) offers a unique opportunity to examine the causal relationship between Medicaid coverage and happiness among low-income adults, using an experimental design. This study leverages data from comprehensive surveys conducted at 0 and 12 months post-treatment. Previous studies based on OHIE have shown that individuals receiving Medicaid exhibited a significant improvement in mental health compared to those who did not receive coverage. The primary objective is to explore how Medicaid coverage impacts happiness, specifically analyzing in which direction variations in healthcare spending significantly improve mental health: higher spending or lower spending after Medicaid. Utilizing instrumental variable (IV) regression, I conducted six separate regressions across subgroups categorized by expenditure levels and happiness ratings, and the results reveal distinct patterns. Enrolling in OHP has significantly decreased the probability of experiencing unhappiness, regardless of whether individuals had high or low medical spending. Additionally, it decreased the probability of being pretty happy and having high medical expenses, while increasing the

Prognostics is concerned with predicting the future health of the equipment and any potential failures. With the advances in the Internet of Things (IoT), data-driven approaches for prognostics that leverage the power of machine learning models are gaining popularity. One of the most important categories of data-driven approaches relies on a predefined or learned health indicator to characterize the equipment condition up to the present time and make inference on how it is likely to evolve in the future. In these approaches, health indicator forecasting that constructs the health indicator curve over the lifespan using partially observed measurements (i.e., health indicator values within an initial period) plays a key role. Existing health indicator forecasting algorithms, such as the functional Empirical Bayesian approach, the regression-based formulation, a naive scenario matching based on the nearest neighbor, have certain limitations. In this paper, we propose a new `generative + scenario matching' algorithm for health indicator forecasting. The key idea behind the proposed approach is to first non-parametrically fit the underlying health indicator curve with a continuous Gauss

Extreme natural hazards are increasing in frequency and intensity. These natural changes in our environment, combined with man-made pollution, have substantial economic, social and health impacts globally. The impact of the environment on human health (environmental health) is becoming well understood in international research literature. However, there are significant barriers to understanding key characteristics of this impact, related to substantial data volumes, data access rights and the time required to compile and compare data over regions and time. This study aims to reduce these barriers in Australia by creating an open data repository of national environmental health data and presenting a methodology for the production of health outcome-weighted population vulnerability indices related to extreme heat, extreme cold and air pollution at various temporal and geographical resolutions. Current state-of-the-art methods for the calculation of vulnerability indices include equal weight percentile ranking and the use of principal component analysis (PCA). The weighted vulnerability index methodology proposed in this study offers an advantage over others in the literature by consi

Selecting the right monitoring level in Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) systems for e-healthcare is crucial for balancing patient outcomes, various resources, and patient's quality of life. A prior work has used one-dimensional health representations, but patient health is inherently multidimensional and typically consists of many measurable physiological factors. In this paper, we introduce a multidimensional health state model within the RPM framework and use dynamic programming to study optimal monitoring strategies. Our analysis reveals that the optimal control is characterized by switching curves (for two-dimensional health states) or switching hyper-surfaces (in general): patients switch to intensive monitoring when health measurements cross a specific multidimensional surface. We further study how the optimal switching curve varies for different medical conditions and model parameters. This finding of the optimal control structure provides actionable insights for clinicians and aids in resource planning. The tunable modeling framework enhances the applicability and effectiveness of RPM services across various medical conditions.

Is environmental injustice driven by a global network of multinational companies? Is there a global environmental justice movement resisting extractivism? This study addresses these questions through a social network analysis of firms and Environmental Justice Organizations (EJOs) involved in socioenvironmental conflicts. Using Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas) data, we examine 3,396 conflicts involving 6,244 companies and 11,231 EJOs. The findings reveal evident structural asymmetries. Corporations form cohesive, sector-specific global networks that support coordination across regions. Conversely, EJOs form a larger, decentralized, and self-organized network characterised by sparse localised interconnections that enable regional coordination across sectors. A limited number of international EJOs involved in many conflicts worldwide weaves a global environmental justice network to match the global spread of multinational corporations and supply chains. This research study shows that these contrasting network structures reflect the distinct purposes of their constituent actors: sectoral expansion for corporations and environmental and territorial defense for EJOs.

The growing demand for home healthcare calls for tools that can support care delivery. In this study, we explore automatic health assessment from voice using real-world home care visit data, leveraging the diverse patient information it contains. First, we utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) to integrate Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan (SOAP) notes derived from unstructured audio transcripts and structured vital signs into a holistic illness score that reflects a patient's overall health. This compact representation facilitates cross-visit health status comparisons and downstream analysis. Next, we design a multi-stage preprocessing pipeline to extract short speech segments from target speakers in home care recordings for acoustic analysis. We then employ an Audio Language Model (ALM) to produce plain-language descriptions of vocal biomarkers and examine their association with individuals' health status. Our experimental results benchmark both commercial and open-source LLMs in estimating illness scores, demonstrating their alignment with actual clinical outcomes, and revealing that SOAP notes are substantially more informative than vital signs. Building on the illness

YouTube has rapidly emerged as a predominant platform for content consumption, effectively displacing conventional media such as television and news outlets. A part of the enormous video stream uploaded to this platform includes health-related content, both from official public health organizations, and from any individual or group that can make an account. The quality of information available on YouTube is a critical point of public health safety, especially when concerning major interventions, such as vaccination. This study differentiates itself from previous efforts of auditing YouTube videos on this topic by conducting a systematic daily collection of posted videos mentioning vaccination for the duration of 3 months. We show that the competition for the public's attention is between public health messaging by institutions and individual educators on one side, and commentators on society and politics on the other, the latest contributing the most to the videos expressing stances against vaccination. Videos opposing vaccination are more likely to mention politicians and publication media such as podcasts, reports, and news analysis, on the other hand, videos in favor are more li

Objective: To enhance health literacy and accessibility of health information for a diverse patient population by developing a patient-centered artificial intelligence (AI) solution using large language models (LLMs) and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) application programming interfaces (APIs). Materials and Methods: The research involved developing LLM on FHIR, an open-source mobile application allowing users to interact with their health records using LLMs. The app is built on Stanford's Spezi ecosystem and uses OpenAI's GPT-4. A pilot study was conducted with the SyntheticMass patient dataset and evaluated by medical experts to assess the app's effectiveness in increasing health literacy. The evaluation focused on the accuracy, relevance, and understandability of the LLM's responses to common patient questions. Results: LLM on FHIR demonstrated varying but generally high degrees of accuracy and relevance in providing understandable health information to patients. The app effectively translated medical data into patient-friendly language and was able to adapt its responses to different patient profiles. However, challenges included variability in LLM responses a

Health messages on social media are typically constructed through combinations of source cues, appeals, frames, and evidence, which jointly shape communication and persuasive effects. However, prior research has largely focused on single elements or simple pairwise interactions, offering insufficient insight into how multiple elements operate together in real-world digital environments. To address this gap, this study adopts a systems perspective to examine multi-element message combinations. Using 1.8 million health-related Weibo posts, we apply clustering analysis to identify recurring combinations and assess their relationships with communication effects. First, four recurring element combinations are identified: Institutional Authority, Narrative, Assertive Appeal, and Contextual Expression. These combinations function as core structures organized around two key elements. Second, stronger communication effects depend not only on core structures but also on peripheral elements aligned with these structures, with combinations of two to four peripheral elements generally showing greater advantages. Third, the optimal level of peripheral complexity varies with source influence, ind

This study introduces an inverse behavioral optimization framework that integrates QALY-based health outcomes, ROI-driven incentives, and adaptive behavioral learning to quantify how policy design shapes national healthcare performance. Building on the FOSSIL (Flexible Optimization via Sample-Sensitive Importance Learning) paradigm, the model embeds a regret-minimizing behavioral weighting mechanism that enables dynamic learning from heterogeneous policy environments. It recovers latent behavioral sensitivities (efficiency, fairness, and temporal responsiveness T) from observed QALY-ROI trade-offs, providing an analytical bridge between individual incentive responses and aggregate system productivity. We formalize this mapping through the proposed System Impact Index (SII), which links behavioral elasticity to measurable macro-level efficiency and equity outcomes. Using OECD-WHO panel data, the framework empirically demonstrates that modern health systems operate near an efficiency-saturated frontier, where incremental fairness adjustments yield stabilizing but diminishing returns. Simulation and sensitivity analyses further show how small changes in behavioral parameters propagate

Large Language Models (LLMs) hold promise in addressing complex medical problems. However, while most prior studies focus on improving accuracy and reasoning abilities, a significant bottleneck in developing effective healthcare agents lies in the readability of LLM-generated responses, specifically, their ability to answer public health problems clearly and simply to people without medical backgrounds. In this work, we introduce RephQA, a benchmark for evaluating the readability of LLMs in public health question answering (QA). It contains 533 expert-reviewed QA pairs from 27 sources across 13 topics, and includes a proxy multiple-choice task to assess informativeness, along with two readability metrics: Flesch-Kincaid grade level and professional score. Evaluation of 25 LLMs reveals that most fail to meet readability standards, highlighting a gap between reasoning and effective communication. To address this, we explore four readability-enhancing strategies-standard prompting, chain-of-thought prompting, Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), and a token-adapted variant. Token-adapted GRPO achieves the best results, advancing the development of more practical and user-friendl

Although serious games have been increasingly used for mental health applications, few explicitly address coping with grief as a core mechanic and narrative experience for patients. Existing grief-related digital games often focus on clinical training for medical professionals rather than immersive storytelling and agency in emotional processing for the patient. In response, we designed Road to Acceptance, a VR game that presents grief through first-person narrative and gameplay. As the next phase of evaluation, we propose a workshop-based study with 12 licensed mental health professionals to assess the therapeutic impacts of the game and the alignment with best practices in grief education and interventions. This will inform iterative game design and patient evaluation methods, ensuring that the experience is clinically appropriate. Potential findings can contribute to the design principles of grief-related virtual reality experiences, bridging the gap between interactive media, mental health interventions, and immersive storytelling.

Sonification can provide valuable insights about data but most existing approaches are not designed to be controlled by the user in an interactive fashion. Interactions enable the designer of the sonification to more rapidly experiment with sound design and allow the sonification to be modified in real-time by interacting with various control parameters. In this paper, we describe two case studies of interactive sonification that utilize publicly available datasets that have been described recently in the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD). They are from the health and energy domains: electroencephalogram (EEG) alpha wave data and air pollutant data consisting of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone. We show how these sonfications can be recreated to support interaction utilizing a general interactive sonification framework built using ChucK, Unity, and Chunity. In addition to supporting typical sonification methods that are common in existing sonification toolkits, our framework introduces novel methods such as supporting discrete events, interleaved playback of multiple data streams for comparison, and using frequency modulation (FM) synth

Electronic Health Record (EHR) has become an essential tool in the healthcare ecosystem, providing authorized clinicians with patients' health-related information for better treatment. While most developed countries are taking advantage of EHRs to improve their healthcare system, it remains challenging in developing countries to support clinical decision-making and public health using a computerized patient healthcare information system. This paper proposes a novel EHR architecture suitable for developing countries--an architecture that fosters inclusion and provides solutions tailored to all social classes and socioeconomic statuses. Our architecture foresees an internet-free (offline) solution to allow medical transactions between healthcare organizations, and the storage of EHRs in geographically underserved and rural areas. Moreover, we discuss how artificial intelligence can leverage anonymous health-related information to enable better public health policy and surveillance.

This research paper presents a meta-analysis of the multifaceted role of technology in mental health. The pervasive influence of technology on daily lives necessitates a deep understanding of its impact on mental health services. This study synthesizes literature covering Behavioral Intervention Technologies (BITs), digital mental health interventions during COVID-19, young men's attitudes toward mental health technologies, technology-based interventions for university students, and the applicability of mobile health technologies for individuals with serious mental illnesses. BITs are recognized for their potential to provide evidence-based interventions for mental health conditions, especially anxiety disorders. The COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst for the adoption of digital mental health services, underscoring their crucial role in providing accessible and quality care; however, their efficacy needs to be reinforced by workforce training, high-quality evidence, and digital equity. A nuanced understanding of young men's attitudes toward mental health is imperative for devising effective online services. Technology-based interventions for university students are promising, al

In this paper, we present novel research methods for collecting and analyzing personal financial data alongside mental health factors, illustrated through a N=1 case study using data from one individual with bipolar disorder. While we have not found statistically significant trends nor our findings are generalizable beyond this case, our approach provides an insight into the challenges of accessing objective financial data. We outline what data is currently available, what can be done with it, and what factors to consider when working with financial data. More specifically, using these methods researchers might be able to identify symptomatic traces of mental ill health in personal financial data such as identifying early warning signs and thereby enable preemptive care for individuals with serious mental illnesses. Based on this work, we have also explored future directions for developing interventions to support financial wellbeing. Furthermore, we have described the technical, ethical, and equity challenges for financial data-driven assessments and intervention methods, as well as provided a broad research agenda to address these challenges. By leveraging objective, personalized

Imaging fluorescent disease biomarkers in tissues and skin is a non-invasive method to screen for health conditions. We report an automated process that combines intraoral fluorescent porphyrin biomarker imaging, clinical examinations and machine learning for correlation of systemic health conditions with periodontal disease. 1215 intraoral fluorescent images, from 284 consenting adults aged 18-90, were analyzed using a machine learning classifier that can segment periodontal inflammation. The classifier achieved an AUC of 0.677 with precision and recall of 0.271 and 0.429, respectively, indicating a learned association between disease signatures in collected images. Periodontal diseases were more prevalent among males (p=0.0012) and older subjects (p=0.0224) in the screened population. Physicians independently examined the collected images, assigning localized modified gingival indices (MGIs). MGIs and periodontal disease were then cross-correlated with responses to a medical history questionnaire, blood pressure and body mass index measurements, and optic nerve, tympanic membrane, neurological, and cardiac rhythm imaging examinations. Gingivitis and early periodontal disease were