EP97 Mental Health and Artificial Intelligence with Besa Bauta

Besa Bauta serves as Chief Data Officer and Chief Compliance Officer for MercyFirst, an organization that provides health and mental health services for clients in New York City. Besa, who is a GPH Alum ('08) and NYU Ph.D. Alum ('18), currently works as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at NYU Silver School of Social Work along with being a licensed clinical therapist. Her current work seeks to support health systems by building technological infrastructure. Besa's current projects include work with the Feedback Research Institute [FRI] and the Social Impact AI Lab [SIAIL] which she helped co-found. What these projects seek to do is revolutionize human services by leveraging the latest technologies to improve outcomes for children and families receiving services in child welfare, mental health/behavioral health, and substance abuse treatment. Her initial work on the SIAIL made her the Winner of the 2019 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Award for Healthcare Innovation and Social-determinants of Health. Currently, Besa and her team are semi-finalists with the W. R. Berkley Innovation Labs' NYU Entrepreneurs Challenge within the social-venture competition. In this interview, Besa and I discuss her work with MercyFirst and both FRI and SIAIL, along with engaging in an insightful discussion about the use of artificial intelligence in developing mental health services and the implications for this, and especially how COVID-19 has shaped the domain and understanding of the importance of mental health. To learn more about the NYU School of Global Public Health, and how our innovative programs are training the next generation of public health leaders, visit publichealth.nyu.edu.