This interagency national challenge brings together the capabilities of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Science Foundation.
Challenge
America faces a chronic disease crisis, with more than 40% of the nation's 73 million children living with at least one chronic condition and rising rates of obesity, diabetes, autism, ADHD, and pediatric cancer whose causes remain poorly understood. Tens of thousands of chemicals are in commercial use with little human safety data, and the cumulative effects of simultaneous exposures, especially during critical developmental windows, are largely uncharacterized because environmental, biological, and health-outcome evidence has never been integrated at scale. The Nation cannot yet trace how the environments in which Americans live, together with lifestyle and genetic variation, drive disease across the life course.
AI Solution
Researchers will leverage linked data sources, including data on genetic background, environmental exposure, biological response, and longitudinal health outcomes to move from associational epidemiology toward causal understanding of disease origins. Models will link environmental exposures and genetic background to molecular effects and to health trajectories across the lifespan, using causal-inference and multi-scale temporal methods to identify which exposures, at which developmental windows, drive which outcomes. Autonomous laboratories will screen environmentally prevalent chemicals at high throughput to generate the biological response data these models require, while physics-informed simulations estimate mixture effects for chemicals never directly tested.
Justification
Success requires assets no single agency holds. The Department of Health and Human Services contributes secure access to the Nation's longitudinal health cohorts, exposome and toxicology science, national biomonitoring, and the clinical and public-health expertise that connect exposures to disease endpoints while protecting patient privacy; the Department of Energy brings exascale computing, autonomous laboratories, and multi-scale modeling methods adapted from the physical and earth sciences; the Environmental Protection Agency contributes chemical characterization and monitoring data; and the National Science Foundation brings foundational research in AI, environmental science, and causal inference. The Make America Healthy Again Commission's designation of childhood chronic disease as a national emergency makes this a first-order national priority.
National Impact
Knowing the causes of disease is the precondition for preventing it. Understanding the environmental and biological origins of chronic disease will enable the healthcare system shift the Nation from disease management to disease prevention. Moreover, it will give regulators much needed evidence to make more informed decisions across thousands of poorly-understood exposures.