Social Equity Requires a Systems Thinking Approach

We are nearing the end of 2020, a year that for many has been the most challenging year we have ever experienced. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered our professional and personal lives in ways we could not have foreseen or imagined. We also know that the impacts have been, and will likely remain, especially severe for racial and ethnic minorities who have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

These disparities, along with the civil unrest and the social divide we saw play out over the course of 2020, have made clear that real systemic change requires honest dialogue—and data to direct action. What’s also clear is that lasting systemic change requires an unbiased and inclusive approach.   

At MITRE, our mission is solving problems for safer world. We can’t do that and accept inequities. Social justice is precisely the type of challenge that needs the kind of unbiased, objective vantage point, deep technical expertise, and systems of systems capabilities that MITRE offers.

To this end, I’m pleased to be co-championing the Social Justice Platform at MITRE with Stephanie Turner, MITRE’s Vice President of Inclusion, Diversity, and Social Innovation. Other colleagues supporting  the platform include Kim Warren, Jim Cook, Doug Robbins, and Charles Clancy.

MITRE is creating this platform as a foundation to begin closing acute divides based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, education, and ability.

MITRE defines platforms as sets of integrated technologies, domain knowledge, and expertise combined to rapidly build impactful strategies. Platforms provide a means to tap into—and add to—existing knowledge to create reusable solutions for current and future challenges. With data, tools, and frameworks, MITRE’s Social Justice Platform advances outcome-driven solutions that address social, economic, and health disparities.

We’ve organized the platform along five focus areas: Health and Social Equity, Resilient Communities, Social Innovation, Technology and Analysis, and Partnerships.

That last one is particularly important. We know we can’t do this alone. Industry and academic partners will be key to addressing such complex challenges, as we’ve shown with the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition. Existing and desired partners to collaboratively tackle issues of social justice include historically Black colleges and universities, Advancing Minorities’ Interest in Engineering, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, industry, academia, government, and others.

Following are highlights of the three fastest moving areas, excerpted from the Social Justice Platform story linked above:  

Resilient Communities: Built to Handle Extremes

When it comes to community equity, the capacity to withstand and prosper in the face of challenges (e.g., hurricanes, pandemics, recessions) is essential.

“Communities constantly change as they experience shocks and stressors; they’re not static,” Jenine Patterson, co-lead of the Resilient Communities focus area, says. “We need to acknowledge the many different needs and starting points within each community and deliver data-driven recommendations so that leaders can create conditions for all residents to participate, prosper, and move forward.” 

Patterson, Resilient Communities co-lead Chris Glazner, and their team are developing a Resilient Equity Framework with the goal of illuminating how the presence or lack of systems and services within a community can lead to disparities in life outcomes.

The team is developing modeling and simulation capabilities to organize and operationalize research regarding race- and class-based inequality in health, social, and economic outcomes. 

Health and Social Equity: Getting Ahead of a Mental Health Crisis

The coronavirus pandemic has taken a significant toll on every American’s mental health. But younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers are suffering disproportionately higher rates of suicidal thoughts and substance abuse during this time, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We’re leveraging MITRE’s work in healthcare and building on the latest research on social determinants of health to develop frameworks for measuring, providing, supporting, and improving mental health services needed to address unmet mental health needs,” according to Cassandra Okechukwu, Health and Social Equity focus area lead.

In addition, the Health and Social Equity team is looking at alternative and innovative care delivery and payment models to accommodate those who have been underserved.

Technology and Analysis: Rooting Out AI Bias

“Artificial intelligence bias is a complex sociotechnical challenge,” says Mikel Rodriguez, director of MITRE Lab’s AI and Autonomy Innovation Center. “Along the winding supply chain of people, systems, and data sets, there are many ways bias can seep in—it’s rarely just one thing.”

Multiple companies and organizations are contributing best practices, frameworks, and algorithms to ensure that AI as a tool is efficient, fair, and balanced across sectors. MITRE will leverage these existing analytical tools and explore new approaches to mitigating bias in AI.

“Bias can be propagated throughout the life cycle of AI development, starting with incomplete data collection and continuing all the way through predictive modeling,” Joe Ungerleider, Technology and Analysis focus area co-lead, says. “We’re examining the AI life cycle to help mitigate bias in our solutions.” (See How Can Ethics Make Better AI Products?)

Co-lead Jay Crossler says, “There’s an art behind all AI feeds. Individual choices and experiences go into what’s developed. We recognize programmers as one of many stakeholders and want to develop tools to raise awareness of the various sources of bias.

“Our goal is to build a playbook to make the system more data-inclusive so that decisions based on AI are better informed.”

With over 60 years of solving large-scale, complex problems, MITRE is uniquely positioned to understand the underlying systems, relationships, and potential levers that drive social change.

In collaboration with partners, MITRE has a history of providing objective, evidence-based capabilities to help policymakers and public and private sector leaders make decisions, which will enable the Social Justice Platform to transform the nation’s current systems and policies into ones that equitably meet the needs of all people.

As Irv Lachow, Social Justice Platform program lead, says, “Social equity is a must-have, not a nice-to-have, across all aspects of government, academia, and industry.”