As we close the chapter on 2025, I find myself calling this year what it has been: the great reset. It has been a challenging time for public health, with swift policy and funding changes transforming our field with unprecedented impact. The gains we made and celebrated over the past five years have been profoundly altered, and the effects have touched countless colleagues and friends across our community. These are not abstract shifts on a policy document. They represent real people, real programs and real communities whose work has been disrupted or dismantled. We have all felt the impact of these changes, and it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. And it’s not just the great reset for 2025; it’s a reset for what’s to come in public health.
This has been an emotional year. Many of us are working through the aftermath, processing feelings of loss, change and exhaustion that run deeper than professional setbacks. They touch the very heart of why we chose this work. Yet even as we acknowledge this grief, we must try to turn loss into the foundation for growth. The losses are real, but so too is our capacity to adapt, rebuild and reimagine what public health can be in this uncharted era.
One way PHII can reimagine public health is by helping agencies become more efficient through leveraging artificial intelligence (AI). A shining star among our initiatives this year was an Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) project to ease the reporting burden on audiologists. PHII partnered with Cal Poly’s Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub), powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), in a project with Mass Eye and Ear, Boston Children’s Hospital and Massachusetts Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) Program. Together, we built a system using generative AI to automate the classification of pediatric audiology reports.
PHII is exploring AI’s potential in our collaboration with the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) network. As the coordinating informatics office for CHAMPS, PHII is managing the development of an AI deidentification system that automatically redacts personally identifiable information (PII) from clinical narratives used in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to identify causes of death in children under age 5. PHII is also overseeing the modernization of the existing CHAMPS data platform by migrating it to a cloud-based solution.
As we turn toward 2026, let’s remember our hopes and aspirations—the reasons we entered public health and the communities we serve. Now’s the time to engage our best ideas and determine how we can adapt and rise to these new, sometimes impossible-feeling challenges. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”
Yes, there will be other challenges and obstacles ahead. But here’s to looking to a brighter 2026 with dedicated resolve, creativity, and a commitment to planning a new way forward. We have always been resilient. We have always been innovative. And we will find our way through this reset, together.