CHID Lab Projects

The Community Data Project: Conversations For Social Change

The Community Data Project: Conversations For Social Change examines the role of data in community life and its potential to support social transformation in Providence, Rhode Island, and beyond. Over a twelve-month period, the CHID Lab team conducted an extensive qualitative research initiative involving over 30 community organizations and local leaders and explored how data is understood, utilized, and contested within community contexts. The Community Data Project contributes to broader discussions on data justice and the ethical use of information in advancing health equity and systemic change.

Techno-Cultural Futures: Art, Leadership, And AI for Change

Techno-Cultural Futures (TCF) is a year-long arts education and leadership program for young artists (ages 18-24) in Providence, RI. Hosted by the CHID Lab in partnership with AS220, the program invites participants to explore the intersection of arts, AI, culture, and social change.

Rooted in the intellectual traditions of Africana Studies, TCF takes a justice-oriented approach: asking how Black histories, cultural practices, and community knowledge can shape ethical and inclusive uses of technology.

 The Transformation of Silence into Knowledge: Black Feminist AI for Breast Cancer Research

The Transformation of Silence into Knowledge is an interdisciplinary initiative that reimagines mammogram images and narrative testimony as interconnected forms of health data, particularly in the context of Black women’s experiences with breast cancer. Anchored in the writings of Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals, the project employs AI tools to annotate mammograms with narrative reflections. By integrating supervised machine learning platforms with literary insight, the project challenges biomedical models that reduce the body to an image alone. Here, AI is not merely used to classify or detect but to ethically align visual data with Black feminist ways of knowing. This approach insists that health data is not only numeric or anatomical. It is emotional, historical, and political. In fusing medical annotation with embodied testimony, the project transforms diagnostic silence into multimodal, justice-oriented narrative that demands to be seen and heard.

Culture, Community, and Digital Health in Ghana

Culture, Community, and Digital Health in Ghana is an immersive,  interdisciplinary course, enhanced by a three-week field trip to Ghana that explores how health innovation and digital technologies are reshaping care in postcolonial and transnational contexts. Through a critical engagement with history, technological change, and global health equity, students investigate the political, ethical, and cultural dimensions of health technology that sit at the larger intersection of Africa and the African Diaspora.