Penn State students, along with a team from Penn State Health, Penn State College of Medicine and Gramener, a data science consulting company, worked together to identify risk factors, health disparities — and the lifetime consequences of — adverse childhood events (ACE). The team was part of a Nittany AI Advance project.
Dr. Jennifer Kraschnewski, vice chair of clinical research in the Department of Medicine, Penn State College of Medicine, said understanding where evidence-based interventions — and resources — may be deployed to best address health disparities in ACE is an important step to protecting children, and their future health.
“Adverse childhood events have serious consequences both in childhood and well into adulthood. We know that people who suffered from ACE have higher rates of many physical and mental health conditions, impacting their health across their lifespan,” Kraschnewski said. “As a primary care physician, I encounter patients in every clinic who struggle with the downstream consequences of ACE. Understanding how to prevent these events in childhood is important to improving the health of our communities.”
Kraschnewski is part of the team that worked on the project, along with Kevin Harter, associate dean for Medical Innovation and professor of practice in Entrepreneurship at the Penn State College of Medicine; Ganes Kesari, chief decision scientist and cofounder of Gramener; and Patrick Elisii, computer science major in the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, and the team lead for AI Powered Recycling (AIPR) — one of the finalists in the 2021 Nittany AI Challenge.
Elisii said the team goal was to identify potential action items for policy makers that could provide leverage in reducing ACE.
“Since we do not have a deep knowledge of how resources are allocated from the Pennsylvania lawmakers, we identified success for this project as providing policy makers with tools, data, and analysis that helps them understand which government programs need change,” Elisii said.
Kesari said the project was a challenging one in many respects and his team at Gramener was able to highlight the potential roadblocks and showed how they could be overcome.
“The data was not easily available, and it had to be identified, cleaned, aggregated and merged,” Kesari said. “Drawing from a decade of our experience in consulting and implementing such data analytics and storytelling projects in the industry, we mentored the students in the approach to adopt.”
Harter said the Penn State College of Medicine is interested in the use of AI concepts in healthcare.
“AI would allow us to leverage the value of our very limited resource, which is our healthcare staff,” Harter said. “This project is just the beginning, and AI is now a pillar of the College of Medicine strategic plan.”
Nittany AI Advance is a team-based, project-focused experiential learning program of the Nittany AI Alliance, a service of Penn State Outreach. It provides students with paid internships to explore the practical application of AI and machine learning to address real-world problems in collaboration with nonprofit organizations, faculty and industry partners. Projects focus on using AI for good in the areas of health, education, the environment and humanitarianism. This program seeks students within the areas of study or experience in software development, user experiences design, project management or data science.
Students interested in exploring opportunities with Nittany AI Advance, can learn more and apply here.
To learn more about collaborating with the Nittany AI Alliance, contact Andy Gatto, strategic partner manager for the Nittany AI Alliance, at jgg115@psu.edu.
Center for Medical Innovation in the Penn State College of Medicine
The mission of the Center for Medical Innovation is to provide a service-oriented organization within the Penn State system to deliver economic and social value from Penn State medical innovation. The center provides guidance and support to streamline the process of moving innovative technologies through the commercialization pipeline to industry, to make a positive economic and social impact in the community.
About Gramener
Gramener is a design-led data science company that helps solve complex business problems with data stories using insights and a low-code analytics platform by leveraging machine learning, AI, automated analysis, and visual intelligence.