How to Avoid Public Health Crises with Help from AI

Dr. Jay Varma explains why public health is the least visible—and most essential—pillar of health, and how AI can help agencies do high-touch, high-reach prevention even amid budget cuts and eroding trust.

Why Public Health Is the Part of Health You Don’t See—Until It Fails

When most people hear “health,” they picture diagnoses, doctors, and treatments. Public health is different. It’s the upstream work that prevents illness in the first place: clean water and air, safe food, vaccination, surveillance, contact tracing, and policies that make communities safer. If we’re doing our jobs well, you don’t notice us—because you don’t get sick.

That invisibility creates a paradox: the better public health performs, the easier it is to defund or ignore. Since COVID-19, trust has eroded, authorities have been curtailed, and budgets have shrunk. Yet the threats—pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, contaminated food and water, climate-driven hazards—haven’t gone anywhere.

A Parable for Prevention

I often share a story: A clinician and an epidemiologist see children floating down a river, struggling to stay afloat. The clinician jumps in to rescue them; the epidemiologist runs upstream to stop whoever is pushing them in. That’s the essence of public health—intervening before harm occurs. The wins can be profound but hard to see: fewer outbreaks, fewer ER visits, longer, healthier lives.

Lessons from the Field: Global Detection and Local Impact

Earlier in my career, I worked with governments overseas to strengthen laboratory testing and disease surveillance—quiet, technical work that helps detect new threats faster. At home in New York City, our “End the Epidemic” initiative expanded HIV testing, immediate treatment, and PrEP access. The result: historic reductions in AIDS diagnoses—proof that upstream investments save lives.

“Let AI expand our reach—and let people deepen the touch. Prevention works when trusted humans deliver it.” —Dr. Jay Varma

The Post-COVID Reality: Trust, Authority, and Funding

COVID-19 created a backlash in places where individual liberty is prized. Many felt their lives were controlled, and bad actors filled the trust vacuum with simple answers and “natural” cures. Today, agencies face three deficits:

• Trust: skepticism toward institutions and experts
• Authority: legal constraints on evidence-based measures
• Funding: fewer people and weaker infrastructure

The mission hasn’t changed, but the margin for error has narrowed.

Can AI Join Clean Water, Sanitation, Vaccines, and Antibiotics?

Five interventions saved the most lives in the last century: clean water, sanitation, nutrition, vaccines, and antibiotics. Could AI become the sixth?

Public health is largely cognitive labor: synthesizing data, spotting patterns, prioritizing risks, designing interventions, and monitoring outcomes. AI excels at rapid synthesis, pattern recognition, and scalable assistance. Used well, it can shrink the gap between what we know and what we do.

Where AI can help right now

• Faster situational awareness: ingesting reports from clinics, labs, schools, and wastewater; flagging anomalies in near real time.
• Decision support: simulating policy choices (e.g., school ventilation upgrades vs. masking policies) to estimate impact and equity implications.
• Operations at scale: routing inspections based on risk, generating outreach lists, triaging scarce resources.
• Ambient documentation: in clinics, AI scribes free clinicians to focus on patients—restoring eye contact and trust.
• Communication and translation: drafting plain-language advisories and adapting them for different communities and languages.

What AI shouldn’t replace

• Human trust: People listen to people they trust—local clinicians, faith leaders, teachers, and community organizers.
• Democratic accountability: Policies require transparent governance and guardrails, not black-box recommendations.

High-Touch and High-Reach: The Real Promise

AI is often framed as a job killer. In public health, I see something different. If AI halves the time analysts spend wrangling data, you don’t eliminate those professionals—you redeploy them to the field. Let machines expand the reach; let humans deepen the touch. Prevention depends on relationships.

Security, Not Just Service

Think of public health like national security. You don’t wait for war to fund defense, and you shouldn’t wait for outbreaks to fund prevention. In a globalized world, microbes can do more damage than missiles. Strengthening early detection abroad protects families at home.

What the Private Sector Can Do

Most AI investment flows to drug discovery and hospital operations. We also need tools for prevention:

• Privacy-preserving data infrastructure for community surveillance
• AI-assisted environmental health (air quality, water safety, food systems)
• “Trusted messenger” toolkits that help local leaders communicate risk
• Workforce multipliers that automate back-office tasks so staff can be present in communities

Two Takeaways for Builders and Leaders

1. Go upstream. Don’t just pull people from the river; stop them from falling in. Ask how your product or policy prevents illness at population scale.
2. Be a voice for basics. Clean air and water, safe food, vaccines, and honest communication are not partisan. Advocate for them where you live and work.

A Healthier Future, If We Choose It

Public health is purchasable—societies get the health they’re willing to invest in. AI won’t fix underfunding or distrust by itself. But used ethically, transparently, and in service of people—not instead of people—it can help us do more prevention with fewer resources, and rebuild the human connections that keep communities well.

📅 Publication Date & Outlet

July 28, 2025 | OpenWater “Wise Up!” Podcast (YouTube)

How to Avoid Public Health Crises with Help from AI – with Jay Varma (YouTube)