What’s next for AI in 2025?

 "Will AI take a sinister turn — insert nightmarish sci-fi movie plot here — and destroy us all in 2025 ?While humanity continues to debate its uses, merits, dangers, opportunities, and ethics, the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) continues apace, making it difficult for anyone to guess just how it might shape the world in 2025, " says Jonah McKeown. 

"AI should be a tool used to enhance the human element of health care, not replace it; he spoke of the importance of the doctor-patient relationship and the need for human empathy, which AI cannot provide."

More at: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/261369/what-s-next-for-ai-in-2025-catholic-experts-weigh-in

We are all interconnected

Speaking at a Press Conference presenting the Pontifical Academy for Life's upcoming Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which took place both in-person and online and from 27 to 29 September 2021 (Public Health in Global Perspective: Pandemic, Bioethics, Future), Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia talks about the importance of global equality in healthcare. In his address, Archbishop Paglia noted that the upcoming Assembly, the twenty-seventh since the Academy was founded in 1994, is not about the pandemic, “but about what we have learned from the pandemic”.

“We had never understood so well how much the health of every single individual is connected to the health of all individuals as in the last period: we are all interconnected, for better or for worse”, he stressed, adding that “the privilege of some people at the expense of others is no longer admissible”.

Archbishop Paglia noted that “the backdrop of the Assembly remains Pope Francis’ Encyclical Fratelli tutti” and the concept that “we are part of a single human family and no one will be able to save themselves on their own”.

“We affirm that life and health are equally fundamental values for everyone”, said Archbishop Paglia, reiterating his concern “that there will always be a free health care system”.

He noted that “if the priority for Western countries is vaccines”, then we must not forget the need to build equitable healthcare on a planetary scale. For the majority of the world's population, in addition to vaccines, the priority is real and effective access to care, but also to the goods that "simply" allow us to live. It is necessary to overcome not only the vaccination divide but also the unequal access to public health, removing barriers such as the lack of facilities and managing more wisely the resources for treatment.

Source: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2021-09/archbishop-paglia-academy-life-plenary-assembly-press-conference.html

Integrated Health Care — What Do Social Workers Contribute?

Social work is a profession based on a value system and a systemic and holistic perspective, which are directly related to the provisions of integrative health care. What Do Social Workers Contribute?

1. Person-in-Environment Perspective. Social workers learn the value of an ecological approach in which a person's well-being and health care decisions must be understood in the larger context of their lives, including their families, communities, and cultures. This includes what has been termed "social determinants of health," a public health approach that basically refers to any nonmedical factors that impact a person's health (Stanhope & Straussner, pp. 3-20).

2. Valuing Social Justice. Social work is unique among the health care professions in that it has an explicit social justice commitment—it is social workers' mission to address inequities based on race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and disability.

3. The Importance of Interpersonal Relationships. That is the starting point in how social workers deliver care. With the growing focus on evidence-based practices, such as motivational interviewing, there is also a growing recognition of the role of interpersonal client-worker relationship that includes such important skills as how to engage and build trusting relationships with clients (Stanhope & Straussner, pp. 167-180).

4. The education of social workers. The education of social workers should includes foundational courses on human behavior in the social environment, which equip students to understand human development, neuroscience, and mental health diagnosis and how these are shaped by social environments and inequities, while social work practice classes teach students key culturally relevant and evidence-based practices and family, community, and organizational dynamics. These areas of knowledge are applied in field learning where each social work student integrates the theoretical knowledge gained in the classroom to actual practice with individuals and families with behavioral health problems.

Therefore, as S. Lala Straussner added:  "Social workers are making significant contributions to integrated health care—it is time that their contributions to individuals and their families dealing with a multitude of physical and behavioral health problems, to other health care professions, and to society are fully recognized." (More at https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/MA18p32.shtml)