Ethical use of big data for healthy communities and a strong nation: unique challenges for the Military Health System.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) created powerful tools for research, particularly for extracting meaningful insights from extremely large data sets. These developments increase research benefits of big data and risks posed to individual privacy, forcing a re-examination of ethics in research which is of particular importance to the Military Health System. To advance discussion of research ethics in this context, the Forum on Health and National Security: Ethical Use of Big Data for Healthy Communities and a Strong Nation was held in December 2018.

Contours of citizen science: a vignette study.

Citizen science has expanded rapidly over the past decades. Yet, defining citizen science and its boundaries remained a challenge, and this is reflected in the literature-for example in the proliferation of typologies and definitions. There is a need for identifying areas of agreement and disagreement within the citizen science practitioners community on what should be considered as citizen science activity.

Capturing and communicating impact of citizen science for policy: A storytelling approach.

In response to the need for approaches to understand how citizen science is currently influencing environmental policy and associated decision making, we devised the Citizen Science Impact StoryTelling Approach (CSISTA). We iteratively designed instruments to be used as tools primarily for citizen science practitioners seeking to understand or communicate policy impacts. We then trialled the CSISTA and associated instruments on four exemplary citizen science initiatives, using different forms of inquiry and collaboration with respective initiative leaders.