{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,27]],"date-time":"2026-07-27T06:02:00Z","timestamp":1785132120313,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":31,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,27]],"date-time":"2026-07-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1785110400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Public Health"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The current communication gap between Public Health (PH) and Computer Science (CS) academics is striking: public health professionals speak in terms of incidence rates, risk factors, interventions, health systems, health policy, and equity, while computer scientists converse in neural networks, optimization functions, scalability, and computational complexity. This linguistic and cultural divide often prevents natural collaboration, leaving valuable opportunities unexplored. In this Artificial Intelligence (AI) era, regardless of whether they are in high-, middle-, or low-income countries, these two departments stand to gain immensely from forging a simple yet powerful bridge between themselves. Connecting through joint seminars, cross-listed courses, shared research projects, co-mentorship of students, and informal faculty and staff exchanges offers clear, immediate advantages: accelerated innovation in AI applications for public health challenges, enhanced employability for graduates entering a job market hungry for \"AI-savvy\" health professionals, and the cultivation of ethical, context-aware AI solutions that truly serve populations rather than merely advancing technology. Yet overcoming institutional barriers such as siloed budgets, geographical barriers (different buildings, districts, or campuses), differing promotion criteria, or scheduling conflicts and cultural ones, such as mutual unfamiliarity with each other's priorities, demands deliberate but feasible strategic planning. This perspective article articulates these benefits and challenges and then concludes with a set of strategies, proposed by a group of public health, health, and computer science academics, to break this divide and build a bridge between PH and CS.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpubh.2026.1871844","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,27]],"date-time":"2026-07-27T05:41:37Z","timestamp":1785130897000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Building bridges between public health and computer science departments in academia to foster artificial intelligence knowledge and skills for the digital age"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Seble","family":"Frehywot","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Global Health, George Washington University, Washington","place":["DC, United States"]},{"name":"Co-Founder IT for Health and Education Systems Equity (ITfHESE), Washington","place":["DC, United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Michael","family":"Cowling","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Hub for Apple Platform Innovation (HAPI), School of Computing Technologies, STEM College, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Melbourne","place":["VIC, Australia"]},{"name":"Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, Tugun","place":["QLD, Australia"]},{"name":"Education\/Information and Communication Technology, Central Queensland University, Norman Gardens","place":["QLD, Australia"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Evangelos","family":"Pappas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, MedTech Research and Innovation Hub, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Melbourne","place":["VIC, Australia"]},{"name":"Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Pudong","place":["Shangai, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yianna","family":"Vovides","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Co-Founder IT for Health and Education Systems Equity (ITfHESE), Washington","place":["DC, United States"]},{"name":"Centers in New Design in Learning and Scholarship, Georgetown University, Washington","place":["DC, United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.7759\/cureus.70048","article-title":"Addressing the digital divide in health education: a systematic review","author":"Bhoyar","year":"2024","journal-title":"Cureus"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-86324-1_25","article-title":"Humanities scholars and digital humanities projects: practice barriers in tools usage","volume-title":"Linking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries","author":"Liu","year":"2021"},{"key":"B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.14742\/ajet.10077","article-title":"Collaboration or competition? 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