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A new technological transformation is underway in the U.S., and public health communicators are at the forefront of work to harness its potential.
As federal and local governments push agencies to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence, the stakes reach far beyond economic competition. From outbreak alerts to climate warnings, the question is no longer whether public health will use AI, but how responsibly and effectively it will be done.
Communication is central to public health, guiding how communities understand risks, embrace healthy habits and respond to emergencies — all while building trust in health institutions and authorities.
“We see the role of AI in health communication as expanding the reach and quality of messages while keeping people at the center,” said Tatiana Lin, MA, director of business strategy and innovation at the Kansas Health Institute.
With her colleagues at Wichita State University Community Engagement Institute, Lin has conducted 30 trainings this year to introduce AI to public health workers. Interest in harnessing AI for public health communication is especially high, she said.
“AI makes professional-quality messaging possible without the costs of hiring outside firms,” Lin told The Nation's Health. “But strong human oversight remains essential to ensure messages are accurate, ethical and trustworthy.”
Across the country, public health practitioners and researchers are testing AI in everyday communication: drafting plain-language messages, deploying chatbots and carefully creating culturally relevant images that are often missing from stock photo libraries.
The goal is not to replace communicators, but to expand their reach, ensuring vital information reaches communities quickly and clearly while safeguarding privacy and public trust. Technology is advancing quickly as pressure grows to adopt AI communication tools.
In Syracuse, New York, an AI chatbot named “Layla” provides audience-appropriate reproductive health information to women.
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In July, the White House released “Winning the AI Race,” a national plan to accelerate innovation and outpace global competitors. Some public health leaders are likening the federal AI push to the technological momentum generated during the space race in the 1960s. Reinforcing its commitment, the federal government in August announced a landmark partnership with OpenAI that gives federal agencies access to ChatGPT for just $1 per agency for a year, a move officials say is intended to speed AI adoption across the government.
Beyond the federal government, public health departments, universities, researchers and nonprofits are showing how both small, hands-on initiatives and ambitious large-scale models can broaden the reach of vital messages, all while keeping communities at the center. From clinic visits in rural counties to national campaigns, the efforts illustrate how AI is reshaping the everyday work of public health.
In Johnson County, Kansas, the local health department is equipping nurses and inspectors with handheld Pocketalk devices to bridge language gaps with patients. Slightly smaller than a smartphone, the AI-powered translators provide real-time interpretation in more than 90 languages. Officials say the tool has quickly become essential in serving the county's diverse population.
“In this time of tightening budgets, it just made a lot of sense to do a one-time investment in a few devices that will more than pay for themselves,” Dennis Kriesel, MPA, deputy director of the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment, told The Nation's Health. “The savings can then be reinvested into other public health needs.”
Pocketalk was first piloted in the department's immunization program late last year. The initial hope was that its built-in camera could quickly translate foreign-language vaccination records brought in by families who had recently moved to the area. Parents often arrived with handwritten documents in Spanish, Portuguese or Arabic, for example, and staff struggled to confirm which shots children had already received.
In Johnson County, Kansas, the local health department is equipping staff with small handheld devices called Pocketalk that can instantly bridge language gaps with community residents.
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“That part didn't work as well as we hoped,” Kriesel admitted, as the software struggled with messy handwriting.
But staff soon realized the device was helpful for spoken translation. Nurses tested it with Spanish-speaking families and found the conversations flowed smoothly. Patients understood the instructions, and staff could quickly answer questions. The discovery shifted the project from a narrow records-translation tool to a broader innovation for in-person communication.
Today, Johnson County has about a dozen Pocketalk devices spread across programs. Immunization and tuberculosis nurses use them daily as do outreach staff who visit families at home, customer service representatives at the front desk and even environmental inspectors who may encounter residents with limited English.
Researchers are working on predictive eye-tracking programs that scan messages and make suggestions to improve readability.
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The tool is not perfect, Kriesel said, noting it struggles with less common dialects, such as Low German spoken in some Mennonite communities, or Burmese sub-dialects. Also, certain medical terms like “varicella” sometimes trip it up, though “chickenpox” works fine. Still, Kriesel said, staff find it accurate for most interactions.
Security was another factor in Pocketalk's adoption. Unlike free apps such as Google Translate, Pocketalk is HIPAA-compliant and meets international privacy standards, easing concerns about patient confidentiality. That assurance helped the device pass county technology review more smoothly than other options, Kriesel said.
Generative AI tools opening new doors
While tools such as Pocketalk show how AI can address immediate, practical challenges in day-to-day public health work, the field is also beginning to explore more advanced generative technologies. Platforms such as OpenAI's text-to-image and text-to-video models — DALL-E and Sora — go beyond translation, creating images and videos that can bring health messages to life with visuals tailored to specific communities. Such tools can help public health practitioners complete tasks that once demanded significant time, cost and effort.
DALL-E can produce images from user-provided descriptions that stock photo libraries often lack, such as images depicting rural clinics, multi-generational families or community health workers who truly resemble the people they serve. Sora can take text, images or video inputs, or a combination of them, and generate a new video clip in just a few minutes to an hour, depending on its complexity.
On a national scale, nonprofit social research organizations such as RTI International and NORC at the University of Chicago are developing advanced AI models to study online misinformation, build empathetic chatbots and test new ways of scaling health communication.
At RTI, scientists are actively testing how those tools and others, such as the more advanced StyleGAN, can strengthen communication research, sharpen health messaging and expand what's possible in visual design. Experts say StyleGAN can go beyond generating images from text descriptions to create hyper- realistic, high-resolution images, especially faces, to create images that more accurately reflect the communities public health aims to reach.
Another line of research presently underway at RTI incorporates predictive eye-tracking. The programs scan text and images to suggest layout adjustments that improve readability and keep audiences focused where it matters most. RTI is also testing generative AI in the creation of digital “personas,” which are fictional but data-driven audience profiles that guide message development. Traditionally, persona-building has been labor-intensive, experts say. Now, AI can generate multiple realistic profiles, layered with audience research, to help communicators design materials that feel more relevant and personal, said Jamie Pina, PhD, MSPH, vice president of data strategy at RTI.
For health communicators, the challenge is to innovate while modeling responsible, ethical use.
“Public health communication depends on trust, and AI gives us new ways to deliver reliable, science-based information at the speed and scale that today's environment demands,” Pina told The Nation's Health.
As RTI tests the mechanics of communication, NORC at the University of Chicago is studying how AI-driven chatbots can deliver accurate, empathetic health information and how communities respond to these tools.
Seventeen percent of U.S. adults now use AI at least once a month for health information, according to NORC. Among teens, that figure climbs to more than 25%. With more adults and teens turning to AI for answers, NORC is developing and testing tools that use social listening, sentiment analysis and evidence-based responses to provide accurate and empathetic communication on sensitive issues like vaccines, HPV, cardiovascular health, youth mental health and body image.
As part of its Health Communication AI initiative, NORC has built customizable chatbots that state and local health departments can train on specific topics, such as vaccine information or chronic disease prevention, and then pilot with their communities to test whether they improve knowledge and trust.
At the same time, however, the rapid spread of AI brings risks, said Amelia Burke-Garcia, PhD, MA, director of NORC's Center for Health Communication Science.
“We're already seeing young people exposed to harmful content in these spaces — from pro-anorexia posts to bullying — and we can't afford to wait 20 years like we did with social media before sounding the alarm,” Burke-Garcia told The Nation's Health.
But AI itself can be part of the solution, she said. By training models to communicate with empathy and accuracy, public health professionals can scale up trusted information in ways they have never been able to before.
“There are risks, but the only answer to those risks is AI itself,” Burke-Garcia said. “We need to learn it, embrace it and use it in our work, because it gives us the ability to do our jobs better and reach people in ways we never could before.”
Among the trailblazers is Ayo Olagoke, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. She is experimenting with tools that generate realistic animated videos and other digital materials designed to reach underserved communities at a fraction of the cost of traditional production.
More than 25% of teens use AI regularly. Ensuring the tools are trained to communicate with empathy and accuracy is key.
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Spearheading projects that span the full communication cycle, Olagoke is testing platforms such as Google Veo 3 for image and video generation, Leonardo.Ai for design, ElevenLabs for voiceovers and Suno AI for music. She also uses Elicit and Perplexity AI for literature review and ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot for text generation. All have free tiers, with certain limitations. By weaving each of the elements together, Olagoke builds educational videos and podcasts that communicate complex health information in ways that are accessible and culturally relevant.
To her, general-purpose platforms like ChatGPT act as the “primary care physician” of the AI ecosystem, pointing users toward more specialized tools.
“In many ways, AI is helping make ‘health for all' more real by making health information more accessible,” Olagoke told The Nation's Health.
Using chatbots to connect communities
In Syracuse, New York, a chatbot named “Layla” is showing what it looks like when artificial intelligence is not just a tool in public health, but a living extension of the community.
The Layla's Got You campaign uses AI and social media to give young Black and Hispanic women confidential, trustworthy information related to sexual health and contraception. In Onondaga County, about half of all births to Black and Hispanic teenage girls are unintended.
Like a trusted big sister or cousin, Layla provides answers to questions that “you're not exactly running home to talk to mom about.” The initiative grew out of focus groups with local young women, who helped choose the campaign's logo, name and tagline. Participants also reviewed chatbot responses, designed Layla's appearance and features and ensured Black and Hispanic women were visible on the website and promotional images.
“Everything about Layla is a ‘for us, by us movement,'” said Tiffany Lloyd, MS, director of women's health and empowerment at the Allyn Family Foundation, who founded the project.
Since its launch, Layla has logged tens of thousands of messages related to contraception and sexual health and has generated millions of impressions on social media platforms.
State and local health departments can train chatbots on public health topics, such as vaccine advice, prenatal tips or disease prevention, and pilot test them in their communities.
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“Layla has been there, done that,” the site states. “She never judges, and you can turn to her for advice about sex, relationships and even those embarrassing, intimate questions about common infections. Whatever your concern, Layla's got you.”
Layla's impact extends far beyond a chat bubble. Lloyd has recruited hundreds of ambassadors —young women in their 20s — who design social media campaigns, host reproductive health sessions and speak at rallies. Ambassadors embody the program in their own voices, Lloyd said, creating TikTok videos, poetry and even campaign songs that tie health to strength.
While Layla provides accurate health information, the project's greater mission is empowerment, Lloyd said.
“We're beyond putting condoms on bananas,” Lloyd said with a laugh. “They know how to Google the basics. What we're doing is putting young women center stage, because when they're empowered, they do what they want to do.”
For more information, visit www.norc.org, www.rti.org and www.laylasgotyou.com.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
