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A few years before virtual reality became a cornerstone of George Mason’s approach to public health training, Bethany Cieslowski already saw its power to improve training for all students, but she wanted evidence to prove it.

Cieslowski, chief innovation officer and associate professor, conducted a pilot study comparing the outcomes from students trained either in a hospital or entirely in VR in lifelike, immersive simulations.

The outcome? The VR-trained students performed better. Not only did they outperform their peers overall, but they showed sharper skills in infection control, initial assessment, and oxygen therapy specifically.

“It helped shift the conversation,” said Cieslowski, who is one of four Certified Healthcare Simulation Educators at the college. “People stopped thinking of VR as just entertainment, and started seeing its power as a proven teaching tool.”

That philosophy drives the Lab for Immersive Technologies and Simulation, an 8,000-square-foot hub on the Fairfax campus where students don Quest headsets and step into scenarios based on real public health challenges.

One exercise has social work students defusing a mental crisis. Another asks health administration students to handle the managerial fallout of a fictional nursing mistake. Others involve situations like infectious diseases, respiratory distress, emergency preparedness, anaphylaxis, opioid misuse, and conflict resolution in school clinics. For each scenario, trained facilitators conduct a pre-briefing to prepare participants for the simulation and its technology, followed by a debriefing to reflect on the experience, discuss best practices, and highlight key takeaways.

Reaching every public health student

So far, nearly 1,000 students have trained in the lab, with a goal to reach every George Mason public health student in the coming years.

While many university simulation centers are geared toward clinical training, the Lab for Immersive Technologies and Simulation was designed from the start for all public health disciplines. George Mason’s is the first public health college in the world to earn accreditation from the Society for Simulation in Healthcare—a distinction held by fewer than 300 organizations worldwide.

Intentionally designed as a low-risk learning environment, the lab encourages experimentation, self-correction, and second tries. “As with any good classroom, immersive tech lets students make mistakes, learn from them, and try again,” Cieslowski said. “This is one of the lab’s greatest assets.”

To ensure the benefits of VR reach beyond their own classrooms, George Mason faculty are also conducting research to reinforce the evidence base on the technology’s impacts. “We’re studying how this training affects students not only during their learning process, but also how it carries over long term into their work in public health,” Cieslowski said.

Social Work Professor Holly Matto saw the impact firsthand while leading students through a VR simulation involving working with a teen in foster care having a violent outburst. Her follow-up work, published in Social Work Education, found the scenario and debrief gave students confidence to handle volatile situations that demand empathy and deescalation. “VR gives students a unique chance to make decisions as a team, get instant feedback, and try various different approaches,” Matto said—echoing the findings in Cieslowski’s early research.

Seeing is believing

Though ongoing research continues to validate VR’s promise, firsthand experience makes the case most convincingly.

Dean Melissa Perry is now a champion of immersive tech training in public health education, but even she was initially skeptical of VR. “How could a fancy gaming gizmo be better than hands-on practice?” she wondered. That changed when Perry put on a headset. “I realized every student in this college should have an opportunity to experience this.”

In the lab, future nurses, health administrators, nutritionists, and social workers can rehearse the decisions and pressures they’ll one day face on the job.

“Virtual reality is poised to revolutionize public health education. Students will be able to put on headsets and step into communities around the world—exploring the social determinants of health in Nairobi’s urban settings, modeling disease outbreaks across America, and preparing for emergency response in high flood risk areas,” said Rima Nakkash, interim chair of the Department of Global and Community Health. “These immersive experiences will improve community readiness, cultivate empathy, deepen understanding, and shape the next generation of global health leaders.”

These are textured, realistic scenarios that no textbook can fully capture.

“The things that the clients say, the situation they’re experiencing, and the setting, are all something that a social worker could expect to see in the field,” Maeve Berman, MSW ‘25, said of her immersive tech experience. “It was really great to experience a different population and a different setting than I had previously worked with.”

Local health systems and crisis teams are taking note, recognizing immersive training as a tool that can help close workforce gaps and meet real-world demands.

“The experience and confidence students gain will help them respond to complex situations they’ll face in the field and ultimately will improve patient outcomes,” said Heather Causseaux, BSN ‘05, MSN ‘10, vice president of operations at Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center. “These innovative tools are transforming health care.”

Constantly evolving

As VR use expands in public health, educators are still actively grappling with its limitations. Some immersive scenarios may lack cultural nuance, or fail to reflect communities where students will work. To help close that gap, the college is designing custom simulations with faculty across disciplines, incorporating feedback from students and partners in the field.

The lab has addressed common VR challenges—like “cybersickness” and physical collisions—by upgrading to Quest 3 headsets and creating a spacious setup that allows students to move safely.

“We learn alongside our students,” said Cieslowski. “If something doesn’t work, we want to know—and fix it.” Keeping pace with evolving tech is an on-going investment, but with the support of current and future donors and strategic investment from the college, the lab can stay nimble and cutting edge

As the college builds its library of VR scenarios, the next leap is already underway: bringing in AI-powered platforms that generate scenarios on the fly and interact with students in real time. “This is the future of VR,” said Cieslowski. “It’s going to change our trajectory.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a shimmer in the distance. In public health, it’s already transforming the ways we predict and detect disease, deliver care, and make life-or-death decisions.

The promise is enormous: AI can scan massive datasets in seconds, spot patterns no human would catch, and deliver faster, more personalized interventions. But the risks are high. AI mistakes can lead to misdiagnosis, overlook red flags, delay treatment, widen health disparities, or harm patients.

In the College of Public Health, researchers are embracing AI’s potential while also interrogating it, testing it, and redesigning it to work better for real people. Faculty are building AI tools to detect cancer earlier, support dementia patients, guide students through biostatistics, document evidence of violence, and flag burnout in caregivers—targeting some of public health’s toughest challenges.

“AI can help humans achieve extraordinary things, but only when humans lead the way,” said Alison Evans Cuellar, associate dean of research at the college. “We want to push the boundaries while exploring what responsible and effective AI looks like in our public health research and education.

One of HAP Professor Farrokh Alemi’s most ambitious efforts is an AI system designed to act like a digital psychiatrist, conversing with patients to gather their medical history and symptoms and recommend treatment for depression. To reduce the usual trial-and-error of prescribing antidepressants, the research team augmented ChatGPT with 2.4 billion connections among diagnoses, procedures, treatment, and outcomes, drawn from 354,400 medical records within a vast NIH database.

The results are promising: In a recent analysis of retrospective data, patients whose clinicians prescribed the same medications as the AI’s advice were 26% more likely to respond to them. “An AI visit is very similar to a visit to a clinician,” Alemi said. “But rather than guesswork at the doctor’s office, it’s grounded in real-world data. You get the antidepressant most likely to work for you. Tailored to your situation with no trial and error.”

Alemi is working on the research as a co-principal investigator alongside Kevin Lybarger of the College of Computing and Engineering, funded by the Patient Centered Outcome Research Institute (PCORI).

For the project to be effective, the team needed to tackle some of AI’s greatest flaws, including its capacity for errors. AI can frequently hallucinate, producing plausible sounding but inaccurate information. Mimicking language from the internet, language models can also generate inappropriate comments, which could be dangerous for medical advice. By using objective data straight from medical records, Alemi’s team cut out improvisation entirely for the advice portion of its system, which follows a script that tells the AI what to ask, how to ask it, and when to stop. “Since the number of possible recommendations is limited, it’s possible to prepare the script ahead of time,” Alemi said.

Furthermore, AI can be steeped in the historical biases and blind spots found online—for example, the underrepresentation of Black and Latino patients. Again, Alemi’s team resolved this by anchoring their language model in the strict objectivity of medical records and training the advice to reflect what works for underrepresented populations.

The AI tool is constructed to rule out conditions like bipolar disorder and substance-related depression and ensures that past misdiagnoses are not an issue. A remote human, blinded to patient identity, monitors the AI and patient interactions to intervene during high-risk moments, such as when the patient expresses suicidal thoughts.

Smarter tools for public good

Hong Xue, an expert in big data and HAP associate professor, is applying AI to another stubborn public health challenge: helping young people quit tobacco use.

His team is developing an AI-powered intervention that acts like a personalized coach for youth trying to stop using tobacco or vaping products—tracking when cravings tend to hit, spotting the patterns that lead to relapse, and stepping in with support at the right moments. In low-resource settings, he notes, the 24/7 access to this kind of help could be invaluable.

Xue is also using AI and simulation modeling to analyze Virginia’s tobacco laws, generating data that could inform stronger protections for young people.

Responsible AI, Xue believes, must meet three essential tests: fairness across populations, transparency in decision-making, and strong privacy protections. “These systems can’t be black boxes,” he said. “Patients need to understand them. Clinicians need to trust them.”

For Alemi, AI offers a proving ground for ideas that once felt out of reach, from reimagining clinical care to rethinking the classroom. Currently, he’s piloting a memory-based companion for people with early dementia, and an AI tutor that guides students through his biostatistics course.

“I bring AI a problem, and it comes back with something I never imagined. It keeps me learning,” he said. “It’s not replacing my work, but it’s opening doors to public health solutions that I could never reach on my own.”

In the world of obesity research, the arrival of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic feels seismic. At a recent conference, Martin Binks, a leader in obesity research, found himself marveling with a colleague: “Can you believe we finally reached this moment, that we lived long enough to see this?”

Touted for their dramatic weight-loss effects, GLP-1s—drugs that regulate appetite and blood sugar—have fueled intense hype and demand. Medications including Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy have “changed the game for metabolic systems disrupted by obesity,” said Binks, professor and chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies (NFS).

But the medical reality is complex. Raedeh Basiri, NFS assistant professor and dietitian, has seen patients successfully lose weight on GLP-1s then struggle with nutrient deficiencies that impact their energy levels, hormone regulation, and even hair. Rapid weight loss can also lead to muscle loss, especially if patients aren’t eating healthy enough to support lean tissue.

Both Basiri and Binks stress that GLP1s are not a standalone solution, but one piece of the puzzle. They advocate for highly personalized weight-loss strategies—in close consultation with medical professionals—that account for nutrition, physical activity, and often psychological support.

“In a perfect world, these medicines would be dispensed in multidisciplinary clinics, and everybody would get a medical consult, an exercise physiologist consult, and a registered dietitian,” Binks said.

In reality, though, most GLP-1 patients aren’t receiving or even seeking that level of support. “They’re just seeing a physician, getting a prescription, and that’s it,” Basiri said.

And in some cases, people who don’t medically qualify for GLP-1s are still managing to get prescriptions, often through loosely regulated online services.

Meanwhile, others who do meet the criteria and stand to benefit most are shut out by cost, with insurance coverage remaining uneven. “Access to obesity care is essential for all who live with obesity. For those who are economically disadvantaged, these medicines are largely out of reach,” said Binks, who has long advocated for Medicaid and Medicare to cover weight-loss prescriptions.

Binks believes access could expand significantly once GLP-1s are available in pill form, a shift he says is already on the near horizon.

Public buzz may cast GLP-1s as a miracle fix, but Basiri urges a broader view. “Without a holistic, team-based strategy that treats the whole person,” she said, “we’re only solving part of the problem for a small segment of those in need.”

As a registered dietitian and researcher, Basiri says her own field is not sidelined by GLP-1s but called to action. “I think the spotlight on these medications only enhances the role of nutrition and dietary recommendations for people with obesity,” she said.