Integrating health equity in artificial intelligence for public health in Canada: a rapid narrative review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: The application of artificial intelligence (AI) in public health is rapidly evolving, offering promising advancements in various public health settings across Canada. AI has the potential to enhance the effectiveness, precision, decision-making, and scalability of public health initiatives. However, to leverage AI in public health without exacerbating inequities, health equity considerations must be addressed. This rapid narrative review aims to synthesize health equity considerations related to AI application in public health. Methods: A rapid narrative review methodology was used to identify and synthesize literature on health equity considerations for AI application in public health. After conducting title/abstract and full-text screening of articles, and consensus decision on study inclusion, the data extraction process proceeded using an extraction template. Data synthesis included the identification of challenges and opportunities for strengthening health equity in AI application for public health. Results: The review included 54 peer-review articles and grey literature sources. Several health equity considerations for applying AI in public health were identified, including gaps in AI epistemology, algorithmic bias, accessibility of AI technologies, ethical and privacy concerns, unrepresentative training datasets, lack of transparency and interpretability of AI models, and challenges in scaling technical skills. Conclusion: While AI has the potential to advance public health in Canada, addressing equity is critical to preventing inequities. Opportunities to strengthen health equity in AI include implementing diverse AI frameworks, ensuring human oversight, using advanced modeling techniques to mitigate biases, fostering intersectoral collaboration for equitable AI development, and standardizing ethical and privacy guidelines to enhance AI governance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.039 | 0.143 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.019 | 0.022 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".