The project is in response to what has become a nationwide mental health crisis, as young people are found to be suffering from sharply rising rates of anxiety and depression. Today, suicide is ranked as the second leading cause of death among 10 to 24-year-olds in the U.S. The rates are higher for Black children than other children.
A research team led by Professor Ying Ding was awarded a $1 million dollar research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD) Program to develop novel interventions targeting risk and protective factors among Black youth with the goal of reducing the suicide rate. The team's objective is twofold: to develop and validate new AI approaches to identify individual-level social risks of Black youth as well as develop approaches that enhance trust within underserved communities regarding the use of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML).
Professor Ding is joined by an interdisciplinary team of experts, including Professor Craig Watkins from the Moody College of Communication and Professor Yan Leng from McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, and Professors Yifan Peng, Yunyu Xiao, and Jyoti Pathak from Cornell Medicine. Additionally, the research team will collaborate with two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Prairie View A&M and Tuskegee University. This partnership will allow researchers to work with health professionals from historically underrepresented groups to investigate the culturally specific barriers that impact trust and hinder deploying machine learning techniques to address the behavioral health crises among Black youth.