March 24, 2025
The OCHIN-led AIM-AHEAD Consortium Development Program (CDP) Year 3 has awarded approximately $500,000 each to six research projects aimed at advancing multidisciplinary efforts to improve health outcomes in lower-resource communities. These projects focus on developing and piloting artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms and tools to reduce gaps in health care for cancer, cardiometabolic conditions, and mental and behavioral health.
Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and led by OCHIN research investigator Taona Haderlein, PhD, the AIM-AHEAD CDP Year 3 program aims to help lower-resource areas keep pace with higher-resource settings in benefiting from AI and machine learning advancements. Many existing models fail to incorporate the data, needs, and perspectives of patients from these regions. To address this, awardees must co-design and pilot their AI and machine learning tools in collaboration with health care organizations serving patients in federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) or community health centers located in lower-resource areas, as designated by the Health Resources & Services Administration.
Bridging gaps in health care access and quality
Since the start of the NIH-funded initiative in 2021, OCHIN has been a leading partner in the AIM-AHEAD consortium, working to expand the representation of health care data in AI and machine learning research. OCHIN’s involvement in AIM-AHEAD allows OCHIN network patients’ electronic health data to be available to a range of clinicians, informaticists, and researchers, ensuring AI-driven questions and solutions are more relevant to the people served by OCHIN’s community-based health care organizations.
The AIM-AHEAD CDP Year 3 program aims to prevent AI advancements from negatively affecting health care quality, delivery, and outcomes. Challenges include:
- Lower-resource areas are not benefiting from AI advancements at the same pace as higher-resource settings.
- Many AI models are not informed by the data, needs, and perspectives of communities facing barriers to high quality care.
The program’s primary goal is to support the development of multidisciplinary research pilot projects that use AI to improve health care access, quality, value, and outcomes for patients in lower-resource settings.
OCHIN leads and supports several other AIM-AHEAD programs in addition to CDP Year 3, including an AI research training program, an AI research readiness program for under-resourced institutions, and a fellowship program to empower clinicians in AI.
Enhancing primary care in lower-resource communities
Of the six projects awarded in CDP Year 3, one is led by OCHIN member LifeLong Medical Care in California. After completing her first AIM-AHEAD project—a pilot award—Yui Nishiike, chief medical information officer and family nurse practitioner at LifeLong, received a second AIM-AHEAD award to improve AI risk stratification for primary care measures. The project uses social drivers of health data to enhance care for patients facing challenges such as housing insecurity or lack of transportation.
“(The AIM-AHEAD CDP Year 3 program) has enabled us to realize our dream to build capacity for research in FQHCs by creating a long-term strategy to continuously seek funding for FQHC-initiated research—by FQHCs members and for FQHCs patients and providers—with a focus on addressing FQHC-centered research questions that impact historically underinvested communities," Nishiike said.
The other AIM-AHEAD CDP Year 3 awardees are:
- Debi Alexander, JD
SPARC, Washington, DC
- John (Jack) LeBien, M.Sc.
Abartys Health, Puerto Rico
- Winston Liaw, MD, MPH
University of Houston, Texas
- Timothy Thomas, MD
Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Alaska
- Yi Zhu, PhD
Hawaii Pacific University, Hawaii
The research reported in this work was powered by PCORnet®. PCORnet has been developed with funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute® (PCORI®) and conducted with the Accelerating Data Value Across a National Community Health Center Network (ADVANCE) Clinical Research Network (CRN). ADVANCE is a Clinical Research Network in PCORnet® led by OCHIN in partnership with Health Choice Network, Fenway Health, University of Washington, and Oregon Health & Science University.
