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Public Administration Dissertations and Final Research Papers

Theses/dissertations from 2017 2017.

Employee Engagement and Marginalized Populations , Brenna Miaira Kutch

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Impact of a State Evidence-Based Practice Legislative Mandate on County Practice Implementation Patterns and Inpatient Behavioral Health Discharge , Carl William Foreman

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

A Case Study of Collaborative Governance: Oregon Health Reform and Coordinated Care Organizations , Oliver John Droppers V

Higher Education Reform in Oregon, 2011-2014: A Policy and Legislative History , Sean Pollack

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

The Institutional Context that Supports Team-Based Care for Older Adults , Anna Foucek Tresidder

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Attaining a Sustainable Future for Public Higher Education: The Role of Institutional Effectiveness and Resource Dependence , Mirela Blekic

Governance in the United States Columbia River Basin: An Historical Analysis , Eric Thomas Mogren

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Use of Media Technologies by Native American Teens and Young Adults: Evaluating their Utility for Designing Culturally-Appropriate Sexual Health Interventions Targeting Native Youth in the Pacific Northwest , Stephanie Nicole Craig Rushing

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

Oregon Physicians' Perception of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Use of Enforcement Discretion Related to the Use of Opioids in the Treatment of Chronic Pain , Robert Dale Harrison

City Management Theory and Practice: A Foundation for Educating the Next Generation of Local Government Administrators , Scott Douglas Lazenby

Theses/Dissertations from 2008 2008

The Institutionalization of Diversity and Gender Equity Norms and Values in Higher Education Settings , Rowanna Lynn Carpenter

Organizational Complexity in American Local Governance: Deploying an Organizational Perspective in Concept and Analytic Framework Development , Charles David Crumpton

Multi-Level Environmental Governance : a Comparative Case Study of Five Large Scale Natural Resource Management Programs , Shpresa Halimi

Police Organizations : an Empricial Examination of American Sheriff's Offices and Municipal Police Agencies , Matthew Adam Jones

Measuring Community-Engaged Departments: A Study to Develop an Effective Self-Assessment Rubric for the Institutionalization of Community Engagement in Academic Departments , Kevin Kecskes

Creating a Theoretical Framework for Understanding Homeland security using Multiple Frame Analysis , Linda Ann Kiltz

Emerging Governance at the Edge of Constrained Federalism : Public Administrators at the Frontier of Democracy , Gary Lloyd Larsen

George Lakoff"s Theory of Worldview : a Case Study of the Oregon Legislature , Catherine Law

Who Benefits? : a Multilevel Analysis of the Impact of Oregon's Volunteer Mentor Program for Postsecondary Access on Scholarship Applicants , Alisha Ann Lund-Chaix

Organizational Change in Corrections Organizations : the Effect of Probation and Parole Officer Culture on Change in Community Corrections , Shea Brackin Marshman

Lost in Translation : Ideas of Population Health Determinants in the American Policy Arena , Maria Gilson Sistrom

Representation without Taxation : China's Rural Development Initiatives For a New Millenium , Minzi Su

How Organizational Arrangements Affect High Reliability in Public Research Universities: Perceptions of environmental Health and Safety Directors , Rita Finn Sumner

The Washington State Patrol, Accountability-Driven Leadership, and the Organizational Factors that Propelled their Success: An Organizational Analysis , Timothy Carl Winchell

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

The Changing Paradigm of Emergency Management : Improving professional development for the Emergency Manager , Robert Edward Grist

Global Civil Society Finding Collective Voice in Diversity , Kristen Marie Magis

Information Technology Training in the Public Sector : Essential Planning Elements , Betty Jean Reynolds

From Prison to the Community : the Role of Citizen Participation in Female Prisoner Reentry , Dana Roderick Torrey

Network Analysis of a Shared Governance System , Debra Reifman Whitall

Theses/Dissertations from 2006 2006

Presidential Values : Implications for Foreign Policy , Jordan Katherine Durbin

The Interactions between Carbon Regulation and Renewable Energy policies in the United Kingdom , Hal Thomas Nelson

Theses/Dissertations from 2005 2005

Reorganizing the Oregon Department of Human Services : an Exploratory Case Study of Organizational Change , Charles Anthony Gallia

Theses/Dissertations from 2003 2003

Portrayals of Disability in the Professional Preparation of Speech-language Pathologists , Jane Eric Sleeper Gravel

Theses/Dissertations from 2002 2002

The Effects of Parent Care and Child Care Role Quality on Work outcomes among dual-earner couples in the sandwiched generation , Angela Rickard

Theses/Dissertations from 2000 2000

The Role and Performance of Governmental and Nongovernmental Organizations in Family Planning implementation : Jordan as a Case Study , Khalaf al Hadded

Theses/Dissertations from 1999 1999

The Value of Independence in Old Age , Paula C. Carder

American Indian Elderly and Long-Term Care : Interorganizational Barriers to the Use of Oregon's Home and Community-Based Medicaid Waiver , Jo Lynn Isgrigg

The Effects of Mentoring on Work-parenting Gains and Strains in a Sample of Employed Predominately Female AFDC Recipients , Charlene Rhyne

Theses/Dissertations from 1998 1998

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Physician Assistants , Roderick Stanton Hooker

Theses/Dissertations from 1997 1997

State Funding for Special Education in Oregon : Calculating Cost Differentials of special education for handicapped students in Oregon school districts , Kyung-Sup Kim

Theses/Dissertations from 1996 1996

Scenery as Policy: Public Involvement in Developing a Management Plan for the Scenic Resources of the Columbia River Gorge , Gordon Mathews Euler

Impact of the Medical Library Assistance Act of 1965 on Health Sciences Libraries in the Pacific Northwest: an Interorganizational Approach , Leonoor Swets Ingraham

Administrative Reform in China: Its Impact on Economic Development After Mao , Meiru Liu

Theses/Dissertations from 1994 1994

Oregon Primary Care Physicians' Support for Health Care Reform , Timothy Alan Baker

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• v.4(12); 2015 Dec

Understanding the Role of Public Administration in Implementing Action on the Social Determinants of Health and Health Inequities

Many of the societal level factors that affect health – the ‘social determinants of health (SDH)’ – exist outside the health sector, across diverse portfolios of government, and other major institutions including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the private sector. This has created growing interest in how to create and implement public policies which will drive better and fairer health outcomes. While designing policies that can improve the SDH is critical, so too is ensuring they are appropriately administered and implemented. In this paper, we draw attention to an important area for future public health consideration – how policies are managed and implemented through complex administrative layers of ‘the state.’ Implementation gaps have long been a concern of public administration scholarship. To precipitate further work in this area, in this paper, we provide an overview of the scholarly field of public administration and highlight its role in helping to understand better the challenges and opportunities for implementing policies and programs to improve health equity.

Introduction

The fundamental socio-political, socio-economic, and socio-cultural characteristics of contemporary human societies shape how people are born, grow, live, work, and age, which ultimately affect people’s health and its social distribution. Implicit here are two levels of “social determinants” – the structural drivers that generate and distribute power, income, goods and services, at global, national and local levels, and the more immediate conditions of daily living. 1 , 2

Many of the social determinants of health (SDH) exist outside the health sector, across diverse portfolios of government, and other major institutions including non-government organisation and the private sector. 3 - 5

There has been increasing evidence of the types of actions that can be taken to improve the SDH and health equity, focusing often on public policy formulation. 6 - 10 However, whilst it is important that policies aimed at addressing health inequities are developed, it is essential that these policies are in fact implemented. 11

From a population health and health equity perspective, there has been relatively little study of the complex policy frameworks and administrative layers through which public policies are managed and implemented. In this paper, we provide an overview of the scholarly field of public administration and highlight its role in helping to understand better the challenges and opportunities for implementing policies and programs to improve health equity.

Bringing Public Administration and Public Health Together

The field of public administration.

Public administration refers to the “organisational structures, managerial practices, and institutionalised values which officials enact” in the pursuit of policy implementation and to enact the will of governments. 12 Hence, public administration does not sit separately from questions of politics but is, as Meier and Hill suggest, 13 ‘forged in the smithy of politics.’ De Leeuw 10 usefully draws a distinction between ‘policy’ and ‘action’ in the field of public health. Here, ‘policy’ emerges out of politics but is largely static; the ‘action’ of policy emerges through its administration and implementation, and involves ‘negotiation and bargaining between those seeking to put policy into effect and those upon whom action depend.’ 14 This necessarily involves engagement with, and interference from, the political processes – particularly when considering complex and often ideologically challenging issues such as a fairer distribution of resources for social and health equity goals. 15 The different ways in which politics intersects with public administration under different conditions during the policy implementation process is explored by Matland 15 and Hill and Hupe, 11 and subsequently will not be discussed in depth in this editorial.

Broadly, public administration is concerned with how to effectively pursue policy goals through layered administrative systems composed of government and non-government entities. Central areas of inquiry which intersect with contemporary public health concerns include:

• ‘Joining up’: How to create integration between different parts of government who need to work together to solve complex problems and implement multifaceted policies (ie, those that might cut across departmental portfolios such as welfare, education, and health). 16 , 17
• ‘Boundary crossing’: How to work effectively with those outside of government who are integral to policy implementation. These include increasingly diverse networks of non-government and private organisations, to whom government ‘contracts’ out service delivery (or policy implementation) functions. 18
• ‘Partnerships’: Connected to the above two points, are questions of how to ensure that organisations and government work effectively in partnership with one another to achieve the best ends possible. 19

Public Administration and Public Health

These lines of enquiry and ways of working in public administration echo approaches taken in the SDH and health equity action and research. Intersectoral action has been central to health promotion since the nineteen-seventies and eighties, 20 typified by the Alma Ata Declaration 21 and the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. 22 This intersectoral action for health speaks particularly to questions of ‘boundary crossing’ in public administration. Here, the public administration literature offers new conceptual and empirical insights by examining boundary spanning ‘objects’ across diverse administrative settings (ie, not isolated to the health sphere). These boundary objects 23 are groups or collections of actors that create different ways of knowing for the purpose of moving cross-sectoral collaborations forward. 24 They act as ‘structural beacons’ 23 , 25 – building, guiding and supporting cross-sectoral collaboration: “Boundary objects and their development help participants make sense of their world, what they may want to do with it, and why, and, in doing so, they… help connect people, ideas and other actors into a way forward.” 24

More recently, Health in All Policies (HiAP) has emerged as a set of institutional arrangements for delivering better health and health equity through interdepartmental coordination (ie, ‘joining up’). 6 , 7 , 20 , 26 , 27 A recent paper which sought to bring lessons from public administration literature to bear on HiAP and related interventions demonstrated that joined-up initiatives require a sophisticated supportive architecture to support implementation. 7 At present, this is not as well-developed in some public health interventions as it could be. 7 Here, the public administration literature offers important insights into how to develop such an architecture. 28 - 30 This includes strong lines of accountability, multiple ‘levers’ for change and a willingness to change implementation instruments and mechanisms over time. 28

Reflecting more broadly on the field of public administration, since the 1980s, both public administration research and practice has moved through three paradigms (though, none of these paradigm shifts have been ‘complete,’ meaning that in practice we see a range of approaches in use):

• Public administration – where the focus was on administering set roles and guidelines. 12 , 31
• New public management – attention to cross-sectoral management, seeking of entrepreneurial leadership within the public sector, growth and use of markets, competition and contracts for resource allocation and service delivery. 32 - 34
• New public governance (emerging paradigm) – commitment to policy networks and collaborative relationships between organisations, focus on institutional relationships within society and government. 31 , 35

New Public Governance (NPG) extends previous iterations of public administration reform – attempting to capture ever complex networks of actors now engaged in public policy – as Kickert and Koppenjan explain “policy networks are the context in which policy processes take place.” 36 These range from ‘politics’ and politicians, through the many administrative layers of government (departments, working groups, committees, advisory boards, and so on), to non-government entities including for-profit (eg, corporate) and not-for-profit organisations. It is worth noting, however, that various elements from across different ways of public administration paradigms (or trends) remain in place. In any one place we tend to see a mix of different approaches in action. 35

Managing diverse networks has led public administration practitioners and scholars to focus attention on how to create administrative architectures and governance arrangements that support communication, accountability and sustainable services (and policy outcomes). 29 , 30 , 35 This area of work is potentially very fruitful for population health researchers interested in action on the SDH at the ‘upstream’ level. Public administration research has shown that greater attention must be given to negotiating values, meanings and relationships across (and within) organisations. For example, what contradictory values might different parts of public administration systems hold (eg, between public health and education or other domains) and how can they be effectively governed? It has also brought relational skills to the fore. Increasingly, public administration research is emphasising the importance of ‘soft skills’ for public service leaders, and those who are attempting to work across boundaries in public policy – because they are important for working in a networked environment. 37 These include: problem-solving skills, coordination skills (getting people to the table), brokering skills (seeing what needs to happen), and flexibility. 37 , 38 Arguably, these same skills are critical for public health researchers working towards change in government.

The view of the policy process offered by new public governance goes beyond Cartesian heuristics (ie, policy cycles, models, and frameworks) that have been previously formulated in both political science and public health. 10 It highlights the fact that ‘policy work’ now happens across diverse domains and under many guises and that we to be aware of this when working in a policy domain. 39 Without appreciating this change, efforts to engage proactively and productively for better health policy and service delivery will be more limited. As community intervention research has shown, knowledge of context is critical for effective intervention and change. 40 Critically, public administration research shows that this context is not static. Bureaucratic structures shift, but they also go through trends and cultural changes where particular approaches to the management of policy (and subsequent programs) are favoured over others. Hence, engaging with cutting edge research in public administration will help to keep public health researchers in touch with contextual shifts which will impact the efficacy of efforts such as HiAP.

At present, the fields of public health and public administration remain largely separate, though it is worth noting that the emerging interest in ‘health politics’ is seeing these fields shift closer together. 10 , 41 , 42 We contend that much can be gained from greater engagement with the public administration literature. New public governance describes the ‘contexts’ in which public health advocates are attempting to intervene to create change. 7 , 43

In doing so, it also extends them – revealing more diverse areas of ‘policy work’ in which public health might effectively engage. Moreover, recent work in this field has shown that if we do not engage policy actors across networks our efforts to create change are likely to be less effective or ‘wash out’ over time. Hence, by better understanding the policy actors and contexts across the diverse policy domains, public health advocates and practitioners will be better placed to intervene in the upstream structural determinants of health inequities that are located within matters of politics, institutional inertia and macroeconomic and social policies whose goals are not aligned with health equity.

Ethical issues

Not applicable.

Competing interests

Authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

GC conceived of the idea and wrote the first draft. SF assisted in refining the manuscript.

Citation: Carey G, Friel S. Understanding the role of public administration in implementing action on the social determinants of health and health inequities. Int J Health Policy Manag. 2015;4(12):795–798. doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2015.185

100+ Public Administration Research Paper Topics You Can Use

Oct 24, 2023

Oct 24, 2023 | Topics

Public administration research paper topics can be a little tricky to find. There are many public administration research paper topics, but you might not know where to look for them or how to use your research time effectively. Thankfully, I have compiled a list of public administration research paper topics for your consideration!

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Best Public Administration Research Paper Topics

• How to improve public service delivery in rural areas?
• How to ensure efficient and effective service delivery by government agencies?
• What are the challenges facing public administration in India?
• What are the methods of improving efficiency in Public Administration?
• What is the role of leadership in public administration practices?
• How can public administration be made relevant to the people?
• What are the different models of administrative reforms?
• How can corruption in public administration be reduced?
• How can public administration be made more effective?
• What is the role of bureaucracy in the Indian government?
• How can the bureaucracy be made responsive to citizens’ needs?
• How can better governance be achieved through public administration?

Interesting Public Administration Research Paper Topics

• Emergency Management
• Urban Planning
• Disaster Mitigation Planning and Response
• Economic Development Policy and Practice in the United States
• Federalism: The Role of States in Public Administration
• Effective Leadership Practices for Public Administrators
• The Role of Public Administration in Economic Development Planning, Implementation and Evaluation of a Community-Based Disaster Mitigation Plan
• How Political Science Concerns Affect Public Administration
• Understand Ethics and Their Effect on Political Decisions
• How Public Administration Relates to Government Accountability

Simple Public Administration Research Paper Topics

• How did the United States react to September 11, 2001?
• How does government handle crises in America?
• What role does technology play in law enforcement operations?
• How do politicians use social media to campaign for office?
• What is the role of local government in making cities work?
• What are the challenges facing small towns and rural areas in America today?
• How do voters view political leaders elected for a second or third time?
• What is the role of the media in politics today?
• How do political parties define their platforms, and why is it important to voters?
• How does the government use technology to enhance its operations?

Controversial Public Administration Research Paper Topics

• Is it ethical for governments to limit social media use?
• Should governments increase their role in the economy?
• Should the government increase taxes on soda and sugar-sweetened beverages, or should we cut them instead?
• Should we ban plastic bags?
• Should government intervene in the housing market to help low-income people find affordable homes?
• Should states be allowed to collect taxes on internet sales made by out-of-state businesses like Amazon and eBay?

Public Administration Research Paper Topics for Middle School

• The role of government in solving problems faced by society
• The effectiveness and efficiency of government agencies at the local level
• A comparison between two different types of governing bodies
• How do decision-making processes differ between local/state/federal levels?
• The effectiveness of political campaigns in influencing voters to make a certain decision
• The impact of new technologies on how government agencies handle daily operations
• The importance of information literacy and how it can improve the quality of service delivery at the local level
• How should government agencies manage their budgets to deliver more value for money?
• The role that social media plays in driving public opinion about controversial issues
• How does democracy work at local, state and federal levels?
• How does the media influence public opinion on certain issues (e.g., healthcare access and immigration policy)?
• How does the government use its power to influence public opinion?
• How does government influence the media?
• How do political campaigns influence voters?
• What key factors impact the effectiveness of political campaigns?
• How can government agencies use social media to improve public service delivery?
• What examples of effective strategies have government agencies used in their communication campaigns?

Public Administration Research Paper Topics for High School

• What are the benefits and drawbacks of implementing a public-private partnership in local government?
• How should local governments manage their limited resources during tough economical times?
• How can technology be used to improve the quality of life for citizens living in disadvantaged communities?
• How can local governments use social media to improve public service delivery?
• What examples of effective strategies have local governments used in their communication campaigns?
• How does public administration impact the lives of citizens?
• How can public administrators improve their communication strategies?
• The Concept of Democracy: A Review of Modern Democratic Theories
• The Role of Public Opinion in the Politics of Developing Countries
• An Introduction to Political Parties and Pressure Groups in India
• How Stakeholders Influence Government Decisions about Water Resources Management
• An Analysis of the Tax Reforms in India: Impact on Revenue Generation, Distribution and Economic Growth
• How Globalization Affects the Indian Economy and What Is Our Response to It?
• How Population Growth Can Lead To Environmental Degradation In A Country Like India And What Can Be Done About This Situation!
• Assessing Administrative Reforms In India After Independence

Public Administration Research Paper Topics for College

• The Role of Public Administration in the Government
• Trends in Public Administration
• Challenges Faced by Public Administrators
• Functions of a Public Administrator
• Issues Facing Public Administration
• The History and Future of Public Administration
• How to Become a Successful Public Administrator
• The Importance of Ethics to the Profession

Public Administration Research Questions

• What is the importance of public administration education in developing countries?
• How can we improve the effectiveness of the political system in Africa?
• What are the challenges facing public sector reforms in Africa?
• How can we strengthen democratic accountability in Africa?
• What are some ways to develop public service delivery in Nigeria?
• Why should we replace traditional institutions with modern ones when changing our government structure?
• How does corruption affect our society’s development, and what can be done about it?
• Is there anything new in management that has not been tried before yet could work effectively
• How can we build an effective public service in Africa?
• What are the challenges facing public administration education in developing countries?
• How do we improve the effectiveness of the political system in Africa?
• How does corruption affect our society’s development?

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Home / Healthy Aging / AI in healthcare: The future of patient care and health management

AI in healthcare: The future of patient care and health management

Curious about artificial intelligence? Whether you're cautious or can't wait, there is a lot to consider when AI is used in a healthcare setting.

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With the widespread media coverage in recent months, it’s likely that you’ve heard about artificial intelligence (AI) — technology that enables computers to do things that would otherwise require a human’s brain. In other words, machines can be given access to large amounts of information, and trained to solve problems, spot patterns and make recommendations. Common examples of AI in everyday life are virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri.

What you might not know is that AI has been and is being used for a variety of healthcare applications. Here’s a look at how AI can be helpful in healthcare, and what to watch for as it evolves.

What can AI technology in healthcare do for me?

A report from the National Academy of Medicine identified three potential benefits of AI in healthcare: improving outcomes for both patients and clinical teams, lowering healthcare costs, and benefitting population health.

From preventive screenings to diagnosis and treatment, AI is being used throughout the continuum of care today. Here are two examples:

Preventive care

Cancer screenings that use radiology , like a mammogram or lung cancer screening, can leverage AI to help produce results faster.

For example, in polycystic kidney disease (PKD), researchers discovered that the size of the kidneys — specifically, an attribute known as total kidney volume — correlated with how rapidly kidney function was going to decline in the future.

But assessing total kidney volume, though incredibly informative, involves analyzing dozens of kidney images, one slide after another — a laborious process that can take about 45 minutes per patient. With the innovations developed at the PKD Center at Mayo Clinic, researchers now use artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the process, generating results in a matter of seconds.

Bradley J. Erickson, M.D., Ph.D., director of Mayo Clinic’s Radiology Informatics Lab, says that AI can complete time-consuming or mundane work for radiology professionals , like tracing tumors and structures, or measuring amounts of fat and muscle. “If a computer can do that first pass, that can help us a lot,” says Dr. Erickson.

Risk assessment

In a Mayo Clinic cardiolog y study , AI successfully identified people at risk of left ventricular dysfunction, which is the medical name for a weak heart pump , even though the individuals had no noticeable symptoms. And that’s far from the only intersection of cardiology and AI.

“We have an AI model now that can incidentally say , ‘Hey, you’ve got a lot of coronary artery calcium, and you’re at high risk for a heart attack or a stroke in five or 10 years,’ ” says Bhavik Patel, M.D., M.B.A., the chief artificial intelligence officer at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

How can AI technology advance medicine and public health?

When it comes to supporting the overall health of a population, AI can help people manage chronic illnesses themselves — think asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure — by connecting certain people with relevant screening and therapy, and reminding them to take steps in their care, such as take medication.

AI also can help promote information on disease prevention online, reaching large numbers of people quickly, and even analyze text on social media to predict outbreaks. Considering the example of a widespread public health crisis, think of how these examples might have supported people during the early stages of COVID-19. For example, a study found that internet searches for terms related to COVID-19 were correlated with actual COVID-19 cases. Here, AI could have been used to predict where an outbreak would happen, and then help officials know how to best communicate and make decisions to help stop the spread.

How can AI solutions assist in providing superior patient care?

You might think that healthcare from a computer isn’t equal to what a human can provide. That’s true in many situations, but it isn’t always the case.

Studies have shown that in some situations, AI can do a more accurate job than humans. For example, AI has done a more accurate job than current pathology methods in predicting who will survive malignant mesothelioma , which is a type of cancer that impacts the internal organs. AI is used to identify colon polyps and has been shown to improve colonoscopy accuracy and diagnose colorectal cancer as accurately as skilled endoscopists can.

In a study of a social media forum, most people asking healthcare questions preferred responses from an AI-powered chatbot over those from physicians, ranking the chatbot’s answers higher in quality and empathy. However, the researchers conducting this study emphasize that their results only suggest the value of such chatbots in answering patients’ questions, and recommend it be followed up with a more convincing study.

How can physicians use AI and machine learning in healthcare?

One of the key things that AI may be able to do to help healthcare professionals is save them time . For example:

• Keeping up with current advances. When physicians are actively participating in caring for people and other clinical duties, it can be challenging for them to keep pace with evolving technological advances that support care. AI can work with huge volumes of information — from medical journals to healthcare records — and highlight the most relevant pieces.
• Taking care of tedious work. When a healthcare professional must complete tasks like writing clinical notes or filling out forms , AI could potentially complete the task faster than traditional methods, even if revision was needed to refine the first pass AI makes.

Despite the potential for AI to save time for healthcare professionals, AI isn’t intended to replace humans . The American Medical Association commonly refers to “augmented intelligence,” which stresses the importance of AI assisting, rather than replacing, healthcare professionals. In the case of current AI applications and technology, healthcare professionals are still needed to provide:

• Clinical context for the algorithms that train AI.
• Accurate and relevant information for AI to analyze.
• Translation of AI findings to be meaningful for patients.

A helpful comparison to reiterate the collaborative nature needed between AI and humans for healthcare is that in most cases, a human pilot is still needed to fly a plane. Although technology has enabled quite a bit of automation in flying today, people are needed to make adjustments, interpret the equipment’s data, and take over in cases of emergency.

What are the drawbacks of AI in healthcare?

Despite the many exciting possibilities for AI in healthcare, there are some risks to weigh:

• If not properly trained, AI can lead to bias and discrimination. For example, if AI is trained on electronic health records, it is building only on people that can access healthcare and is perpetuating any human bias captured within the records.
• AI chatbots can generate medical advice that is misleading or false, which is why there’s a need for effectively regulating their use.

Where can AI solutions take the healthcare industry next?

As AI continues to evolve and play a more prominent role in healthcare, the need for effective regulation and use becomes more critical. That’s why Mayo Clinic is a member of Health AI Partnership, which is focused on helping healthcare organizations evaluate and implement AI effectively, equitably and safely.

In terms of the possibilities for healthcare professionals to further integrate AI, Mark D. Stegall, M.D., a transplant surgeon and researcher at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota says, “I predict AI also will become an important decision-making tool for physicians.”

Mayo Clinic hopes that AI could help create new ways to diagnose, treat, predict, prevent and cure disease. This might be achieved by:

• Selecting and matching patients with the most promising clinical trials.
• Developing and setting up remote health-monitoring devices.
• Detecting currently imperceptible conditions.
• Anticipating disease-risk years in advance.

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There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.

• While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history , the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years.
• According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ), "Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact." 1
• Scientific information taken from natural sources (such as ice cores, rocks, and tree rings) and from modern equipment (like satellites and instruments) all show the signs of a changing climate.
• From global temperature rise to melting ice sheets, the evidence of a warming planet abounds.

The rate of change since the mid-20th century is unprecedented over millennia.

Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 800,000 years, there have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia. 1 It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun’s energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.

Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

Scientists demonstrated the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases in the mid-19th century. 2 Many of the science instruments NASA uses to study our climate focus on how these gases affect the movement of infrared radiation through the atmosphere. From the measured impacts of increases in these gases, there is no question that increased greenhouse gas levels warm Earth in response.

Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age. 3

The Evidence for Rapid Climate Change Is Compelling:

Global Temperature Is Rising

The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and other human activities. 4 Most of the warming occurred in the past 40 years, with the seven most recent years being the warmest. The years 2016 and 2020 are tied for the warmest year on record. 5 Image credit: Ashwin Kumar, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

The Ocean Is Getting Warmer

The ocean has absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 100 meters (about 328 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.33 degrees Celsius) since 1969. 6 Earth stores 90% of the extra energy in the ocean. Image credit: Kelsey Roberts/USGS

The Ice Sheets Are Shrinking

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2019, while Antarctica lost about 148 billion tons of ice per year. 7 Image: The Antarctic Peninsula, Credit: NASA

Glaciers Are Retreating

Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska, and Africa. 8 Image: Miles Glacier, Alaska Image credit: NASA

Snow Cover Is Decreasing

Satellite observations reveal that the amount of spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades and the snow is melting earlier. 9 Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Sea Level Is Rising

Global sea level rose about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in the last century. The rate in the last two decades, however, is nearly double that of the last century and accelerating slightly every year. 10 Image credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Norfolk District

Arctic Sea Ice Is Declining

Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades. 11 Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Extreme Events Are Increasing in Frequency

The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events. 12 Image credit: Régine Fabri,  CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Ocean Acidification Is Increasing

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30%. 13 , 14 This increase is due to humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the ocean. The ocean has absorbed between 20% and 30% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in recent decades (7.2 to 10.8 billion metric tons per year). 1 5 , 16 Image credit: NOAA

1. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, WGI, Technical Summary . B.D. Santer et.al., “A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere.” Nature 382 (04 July 1996): 39-46. https://doi.org/10.1038/382039a0. Gabriele C. Hegerl et al., “Detecting Greenhouse-Gas-Induced Climate Change with an Optimal Fingerprint Method.” Journal of Climate 9 (October 1996): 2281-2306. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(1996)009<2281:DGGICC>2.0.CO;2. V. Ramaswamy, et al., “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling.” Science 311 (24 February 2006): 1138-1141. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1122587. B.D. Santer et al., “Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes.” Science 301 (25 July 2003): 479-483. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1084123. T. Westerhold et al., "An astronomically dated record of Earth’s climate and its predictability over the last 66 million years." Science 369 (11 Sept. 2020): 1383-1387. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1094123

2. In 1824, Joseph Fourier calculated that an Earth-sized planet, at our distance from the Sun, ought to be much colder. He suggested something in the atmosphere must be acting like an insulating blanket. In 1856, Eunice Foote discovered that blanket, showing that carbon dioxide and water vapor in Earth's atmosphere trap escaping infrared (heat) radiation. In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized Earth's natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth’s atmosphere to global warming. In 1941, Milutin Milankovic linked ice ages to Earth’s orbital characteristics. Gilbert Plass formulated the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change in 1956.

3. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, WG1, Chapter 2 Vostok ice core data; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record O. Gaffney, W. Steffen, "The Anthropocene Equation." The Anthropocene Review 4, issue 1 (April 2017): 53-61. https://doi.org/abs/10.1177/2053019616688022.

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5. https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20170118/

6. S. Levitus, J. Antonov, T. Boyer, O Baranova, H. Garcia, R. Locarnini, A. Mishonov, J. Reagan, D. Seidov, E. Yarosh, M. Zweng, " NCEI ocean heat content, temperature anomalies, salinity anomalies, thermosteric sea level anomalies, halosteric sea level anomalies, and total steric sea level anomalies from 1955 to present calculated from in situ oceanographic subsurface profile data (NCEI Accession 0164586), Version 4.4. (2017) NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index3.html K. von Schuckmann, L. Cheng, L,. D. Palmer, J. Hansen, C. Tassone, V. Aich, S. Adusumilli, H. Beltrami, H., T. Boyer, F. Cuesta-Valero, D. Desbruyeres, C. Domingues, A. Garcia-Garcia, P. Gentine, J. Gilson, M. Gorfer, L. Haimberger, M. Ishii, M., G. Johnson, R. Killick, B. King, G. Kirchengast, N. Kolodziejczyk, J. Lyman, B. Marzeion, M. Mayer, M. Monier, D. Monselesan, S. Purkey, D. Roemmich, A. Schweiger, S. Seneviratne, A. Shepherd, D. Slater, A. Steiner, F. Straneo, M.L. Timmermans, S. Wijffels. "Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go?" Earth System Science Data 12, Issue 3 (07 September 2020): 2013-2041. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2013-2020.

7. I. Velicogna, Yara Mohajerani, A. Geruo, F. Landerer, J. Mouginot, B. Noel, E. Rignot, T. Sutterly, M. van den Broeke, M. Wessem, D. Wiese, "Continuity of Ice Sheet Mass Loss in Greenland and Antarctica From the GRACE and GRACE Follow-On Missions." Geophysical Research Letters 47, Issue 8 (28 April 2020): e2020GL087291. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL087291.

8. National Snow and Ice Data Center World Glacier Monitoring Service

9. National Snow and Ice Data Center D.A. Robinson, D. K. Hall, and T. L. Mote, "MEaSUREs Northern Hemisphere Terrestrial Snow Cover Extent Daily 25km EASE-Grid 2.0, Version 1 (2017). Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/CRYOSPHERE/nsidc-0530.001 . http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/snow_extent.html Rutgers University Global Snow Lab. Data History

10. R.S. Nerem, B.D. Beckley, J. T. Fasullo, B.D. Hamlington, D. Masters, and G.T. Mitchum, "Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era." PNAS 15, no. 9 (12 Feb. 2018): 2022-2025. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1717312115.

11. https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_ice.html Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) http://psc.apl.washington.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/ http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/projections-of-an-ice-diminished-arctic-ocean/

12. USGCRP, 2017: Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 470 pp, https://doi.org/10.7930/j0j964j6 .

13. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F

14. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification

15. C.L. Sabine, et al., “The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2.” Science 305 (16 July 2004): 367-371. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1097403.

16. Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate , Technical Summary, Chapter TS.5, Changing Ocean, Marine Ecosystems, and Dependent Communities, Section 5.2.2.3. https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/technical-summary/

Header image shows clouds imitating mountains as the sun sets after midnight as seen from Denali's backcountry Unit 13 on June 14, 2019. Credit: NPS/Emily Mesner Image credit in list of evidence: Ashwin Kumar, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

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