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.

We Are the Data: Youth Voices, Cultural Narratives, and AI Accountability

We Are the Data is an interdisciplinary youth-centered program that explores how artificial intelligence technologies shape identity, representation, and community memory. Through hands-on workshops and critical dialogue, youth participants learn to tell their own cultural narratives using AI storytelling tools while developing the skills to navigate digital environments safely and ethically. Grounded in principles of mental wellness, digital literacy, and cultural preservation, the project challenges dominant narratives embedded in algorithmic systems and empowers young people to become creators, not just consumers, of technology. By centering youth voices and their lived experiences, We Are the Data reframes AI as a site of possibility, resistance, and care.

The Transformation of Silence into Data: Annotating Black Women’s Mammograms with Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals

The Transformation of Silence into Data 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 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 data that demands to be seen and heard.

Voices for Health Equity: Expert Reflections On Providence

Voices for Health Equity is a digital booklet that gathers powerful quotes and reflections from health professionals working in and around Providence, Rhode Island. This project amplifies the voices of those on the frontlines of public health, doctors, nurses, community health workers, researchers, and advocates who offer critical insight into the persistent health disparities facing the city’s communities.