Can We Trust a Silent System? Technological Change and Relationships in Health Care
On Wednesday, September 30th, from 1-1:50 PM in FXB G13 or online, please join us for the first installment in our new Trust and Well-being Seminar Series, featuring Dr. Jodyn Platt.
This seminar series will explore the role of trust in promoting psychological, physical, and social well-being. At a time of declining trust in institutions, political polarization, fear-based public discourse, and rapidly changing technologies that shape how people encounter information and one another, the series will consider trust not only as an individual experience but also as a central feature of collective well-being. Through conversations with leading scholars and practitioners, we will examine how trust is defined and measured across diverse social and cultural contexts; how it functions across relationships, communities, institutions, and generations; and how it is built, maintained, broken, and repaired.
The series will also explore how social, political, commercial, and cultural factors shape trust, with particular attention to health equity and the histories of exclusion, discrimination, disinvestment, and institutional harm that influence whether communities feel able to trust systems. Together, we will consider how trust and trustworthiness can promote safety, belonging, resilience, civic participation, health-promoting behaviors, and flourishing while helping to build more connected, equitable, and resilient communities and systems.
All are welcome. Lunch provided.
Seminar Description
Trust is a complex system. It operates ecologically across relationships between individuals, communities, institutions, and networks. This seminar takes up health care in the U.S., where trustworthiness is a foundational principle as well as a longstanding question of authenticity and sustainability. Over the past decade, the accelerating use of health information technologies, including AI, has amplified those questions. In our national surveys and deliberations, most U.S. adults report low trust in health systems’ use of AI, and want notification they rarely receive. These attitudes align more closely with general trust in the health system than with beliefs about the technology itself, underscoring trust as a feature of an open system. We will consider how systemic trust relates to interpersonal trust, what trustworthiness requires when relationships are mediated by systems that remain opaque to the people they aim to serve, and how trust might be renegotiated rather than succumb to erosion.
Speaker Biography
Dr. Jodyn Platt serves as Associate Professor of Learning Health Sciences, University of Michigan Medical School, and Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy, University of Michigan School of Public Health. Her work explores how data and technology can be used responsibly to improve health while earning and sustaining public trust. Trained in medical sociology and health policy, she studies the ethical, social, and policy questions that arise as health systems become more data-driven and powered by artificial intelligence.
From 2021 to 2024, she served as the inaugural Senior Scholar in Residence with AcademyHealth and the ABIM Foundation. Dr. Platt works closely with patients, communities, and healthcare organizations to understand how people think about and experience data use in health and medicine. By combining diverse research methods and community insight, her goal is to turn evidence into actionable strategies that help make healthcare policy and practice more trustworthy, transparent, and inclusive.
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AI and humanitarian data: Evidence on reliability, limits, and human oversight
Join the Department of Global Health and Population for this Brown Bag Seminar featuring Patrick Vinck, PhD, research director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. We will discuss the reliability and limits of AI for qualitative humanitarian data analysis, with a focus on what these findings imply for human oversight, responsible use, and decision-making.
Speaker bio
Patrick Vinck, PhD, is research director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research focuses on how people and communities affected by conflict, mass violence, and disasters experience and respond to crises. This work has increasingly led him to examine how data and technology shape crisis research and decision-making, including questions around responsible technology and artificial intelligence. He is a co-founder of KoboToolbox, an open-source data collection platform widely used in humanitarian, development, public health, and human rights settings.
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Causal Estimands for Clinical and Regulatory Decision Making
Join us on Wednesday, December 2nd for the Department of Epidemiology seminar series featuring Dr. Miguel Hernan.
Abstract: The estimand is what we want to estimate. When conducting research for clinical and regulatory purposes, the causal estimand typically involves the causal effect of an intervention. Three frameworks have been proposed to describe the causal estimand in randomized trials and observational studies: PICO, the target trial framework, and the E9 (R1) Addendum of the International Council for Harmonisation (ICH). This talks provides a side-by-side comparison of these three estimand frameworks for causal inference, translate across their terminologies, and highlight their commonalities and peculiarities. For decision makers who ask causal questions, the target trial framework subsumes the other two frameworks by providing the most flexibility and level of detail.
Bio: Miguel Hernán is the Director of CAUSALab, the Kolokotrones Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and faculty at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His team repurposes real world data into actionable evidence for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental illness. Their work has contributed to shape health research methodology worldwide.
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Future of Public Health in the age of AI
Join us on Monday, September 14th for a special Department of Epidemiology seminar featuring Dr. Karl Lauterbach.
Abstract: While the mainstream discourse surrounding artificial intelligence in medicine remains heavily focused on drug discovery, diagnostics, and curative care, these near-term promises often overshadow a more consequential frontier: prevention. This talk examines the paradigm shift toward preventive AI at both the individual and population levels. We will explore how predictive modeling, early risk stratification, and data-driven public health strategies can proactively reduce chronic disease burden, preserve quality of life, and address systemic health disparities—highlighting the most high-impact, evidence-based interventions on the horizon.
Bio: Karl Lauterbach is a German physician, health economist, and SPD politician currently serving as the chair of the Research Committee of the German parliament. From December 2021 to 2025, he served as Federal Minister of Health of Germany. He has served as an adjunct professor at the Department of Health Policy and Management of Harvard School of Public Health since 2008 and is a Professor of Health Economics and Epidemiology at the University of Cologne. His research has focused on chronic disease prevention and management, as well as health economics and policy, and he has held advisory roles including the Rürup Commission on social security financing. He has been a Member of the Bundestag since 2005 and served as Deputy Parliamentary Party Leader of the SPD from 2013 to 2020.
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Karl Lauterbach, Drmed, MPH
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Bearing Witness: Children, Health, and Human Rights in the Face of Violence – A conversation across poetry, medicine and testimony
Join us at FXB for an in-person fireside chat on how poetry, medicine, and testimony can help us bear witness to the experiences of children affected by violence—and explore the profound consequences for health and human rights.
The conversation will feature Yale Artist-in-Residence Grzegorz Kwiatkowski and Dr. David Mills, Co-Director of FXB’s Palestine Program on Health and Human Rights and will be moderated by FXB’s Director of Research, Professor Jacqueline Bhabha.
HUID required. Lunch will be provided. Please register in advance.
Speaker Information
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski
Moderator
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Harvard Pop Center Hybrid Social Demography Seminar with Jung Hyun Kim
Jung Hyun Kim, PhD, David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presents “From labor market institutions to individual workplaces: Rethinking the health effects of labor market conditions.”
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Harvard Pop Center Hybrid Social Demography Seminar with Tom Lindman
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Harvard Pop Center Social Demography Seminar with Christopher Muller
Christopher Michael Muller, PhD, professor of sociology at Harvard University, presents “When agricultural work disappeared: Mechanization and southern incarceration, 1945–1971.”
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Christopher Michael Muller, PhD
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Harvard Pop Center Hybrid Social Demography Seminar with Minjin Chae
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Climate Change and Planetary Health Concentration Kickoff Lunch
Climate change, air pollution, and ecological degradation have had extreme impacts on the health of our planet. Our ability to urgently and ambitiously implement climate crisis solutions will define public health outcomes for generations to come. The Climate Change and Planetary Health Concentration, will help you understand the consequences of the current planetary health crisis, including the effects on food, water, air, extreme weather events, heat, migration, and political stability and their subsequent impacts on infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, nutrition, and mental health.
Join us for this kick-off and welcome lunch to learn more about the concentration. All Harvard Chan students are welcome.
Free pizza lunch will be provided.