Enhancing AI Integration in Human and Health Services

Mathematica provided recommendations to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) on leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance operations across human and health services.

“The pace of AI development and deployment is rapid, and without rigorous equity, governance, privacy, and security controls, as well as research and evidence on the impacts of AI, these advances could result in more harm than good,” wrote Mathematica. “AI should be viewed as an additive technology that supports human decision making by helping place relevant and practical insights at the fingertips of agency staff, practitioners, and policymakers.”

Drawing on its history of close partnership with ACF and its data-driven work, Mathematica provided insights for enhancing AI integration in human and health services, in response to ACF’s request for information. Specifically, Mathematica’s recommendations to ACF include:

• Expand AI literacy through human services agency investments in translational media and in training and tailored technical assistance.
• Develop tailored practitioners’ guides with built-in checkpoints for AI users to assess security, privacy, ethical, and equity considerations of AI solutions under consideration.
• Explore potentially transformative applications for AI, including enhancing data linking and cross-agency interoperability, supporting review of competitive grant applications, and streamlining resource publication processes.
• Fund AI demonstration projects and evaluate their impacts.
• Hold a competition to incubate innovation and learn from practitioners in other industries. Alternatively, a democratic approach to data and resource access through the release of public and restricted use files can lead to similar innovative outcomes.

Mathematica’s approach to AI is grounded in its foundational commitment to trusted data stewardship. Learn more about AI at Mathematica here.