HALE Chair for Health, AI, and Learning for Global Equity
Learning and artificial intelligence for more equitable global health.
Composition inspired by Miró. Created by ChatGPT, 2025
Specifically, in the spirit of Miró, universal health becomes a constellation of signs: human figures linked by lines that flow like energy, a spiralling sun that radiates justice and hope, and abstract forms that evoke artificial intelligence and digital thinking. A cosmic dance of colour and balance where human and technology celebrate life together.
Composition inspired by Miró. Created by ChatGPT, 2025
Specifically, in the spirit of Miró, universal health becomes a constellation of signs: human figures linked by lines that flow like energy, a spiralling sun that radiates justice and hope, and abstract forms that evoke artificial intelligence and digital thinking. A cosmic dance of colour and balance where human and technology celebrate life together.
Who we are
Established in July 2025, the HALE Chair was created in response to the evidence that major global health challenges cannot be addressed by health alone. Social, economic and environmental determinants influence life expectancy, well-being and disease burden much more profoundly than individual behaviour or access to health services. From this premise, the HALE Chair aims to contribute to the improvement of global health by addressing problems of great magnitude and inequity through interdisciplinary responses based on scientific evidence, ethics and education.
Comillas Pontifical University, aware of the transformation that higher education is undergoing towards more personalised models supported by emerging technologies, as well as the persistence of profound inequalities in health, recognises the need to train professionals capable of understanding the impact of their decisions on individual and collective health. The HALE Chair was created precisely to respond to this institutional commitment, combining technological innovation and interdisciplinary learning to contribute to equity and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
An academic innovation space that brings together artificial intelligence and university education to promote more equitable and sustainable health worldwide.
Mission and objectives
The HALE Chair's mission is to promote global health by identifying and addressing problems of great magnitude and marked inequity, whose solution requires the involvement of disciplines beyond the health sciences. Its action is based on scientific evidence, ethics, education and social responsibility.
The ultimate aim is that, in the near future, newly qualified professionals in fields such as engineering, law, economics, urban planning, education or communication, act with a deep understanding of the social determinants of health and contribute, from their areas, to prevent the structural errors that perpetuate inequity and preventable suffering.
- Consolidate an international training network that integrates the social determinants of health in higher education, starting with road safety as a first practical application, under the ROAD project.
- Produce educational materials, initially HALE Capsules: short, self-contained, rigorous, targeted educational units, adaptable to different languages, student diversities and cultural contexts. In the future, they can be compiled to form broader and deeper learning paths, the HALE Itineraries.
- Integrate these Capsules in a transversal way in university programmes of different disciplines, especially in those outside the field of health, adapting them to each academic context.
- Take advantage of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies to create, personalise and disseminate HALE Capsules.
- Encourage national and international academic collaboration, especially within the network of Jesuit universities, in the creation and adaptation of HALE Capsules.
- Strengthen health capacity building in low and middle income countries.
- Share the knowledge generated so that it can be incorporated and used by artificial intelligence tools in their learning processes and in the quality of their responses.
The team
Contributors
Advisory Council
HALE capsules
Pedagogical production constitutes one of the central axes of this mission and starts with the HALE Capsules: short, self-contained, rigorous, focused and adaptable educational units. They are designed to incorporate essential health-related concepts into university programmes in disciplines such as engineering, law, economics, communication or education, in coherence with the competencies and learning outcomes foreseen in each subject. HALE Capsules are conceived as stand-alone resources, although in the future they may be compiled to form HALE Pathways. They balance conceptual depth, clarity and adaptability, facilitating their integration into existing subjects. Their prioritisation responds to precise criteria: large-scale problems and marked injustice, especially those that disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries. Road safety, through the ROAD2 project, is the first area of application and the methodological starting point of the Chair.
The HALE Capsules will be developed with the support of digital tools and artificial intelligence technologies for scripting, activity design, audiovisual production and linguistic, cultural and training adaptation. This approach will allow each capsule to be tailored to different academic and local contexts with minimal effort. All HALE Capsules will be hosted on institutional servers and accessible through a search engine. In addition, they will be published under Creative Commons licences - or equivalent models in each country - to guarantee free access and reuse, as long as the authorship is acknowledged.
To ensure educational quality, the HALE Chair will implement an evaluation process that will analyse the degree of alignment of each capsule with university curricula and learning objectives. Its impact on students' knowledge, attitudes and skills will also be assessed, as well as the perception of the teaching staff and the students themselves.
The initial development of the HALE Capsules will be undertaken by Comillas teaching staff, previously trained in the necessary technical and pedagogical skills. As the initiative progresses, a common training framework will be established that will progressively incorporate teachers from Jesuit universities around the world and from other academic institutions. This expanding network will enrich the diversity, cultural relevance and global reach of the HALE Chair's pedagogical output, strengthening its contribution to a more equitable approach to global health.
ACCREDITATION SYSTEMS
One of its main thrusts is the development of international accreditation systems that recognise and validate knowledge and competencies linked to priority global health issues. Effective models exist in other fields, such as the University of Cambridge's English language certification, which serve as a reference. These systems are designed both for individuals with diverse educational backgrounds and for institutions, employers and funders that require verifiable indicators of technical capacity.
The proposed accreditation model will rely on advanced technological tools. Artificial intelligence will play a central role in creating high quality item banks, analysing question performance, adjusting difficulty and developing multilingual assessments. The exams will be administered through the Comillas Pontifical University's secure digital platform, which incorporates identity verification to ensure the integrity of the process. Depending on the nature of the content, additional modalities such as online proctored tests, face-to-face examinations at partner institutions or oral assessments may be used.
Accreditations will have a defined period of validity, reflecting the need to update knowledge in rapidly evolving areas. The sustainability of the system will be ensured through a fee structure designed to cover administration and maintenance costs, complemented by possible sponsorships to facilitate access for people from less affluent backgrounds, thus balancing global reach, accessibility and long-term viability.
Institutional legitimacy will be a key element of the model. For each thematic area, advisory groups will be set up comprising members of professional organisations of recognised standing in their respective fields. Rather than relying exclusively on academic institutions, these groups will include entities directly involved in practice, regulation or implementation, ensuring that accredited competences respond to real needs in the professional environment. Their endorsement will reinforce the credibility of the system with employers, government bodies, development agencies and international organisations.
Together, the HALE Chair accreditation systems aim to strengthen professional training on a global scale, promote equity in access to training and employment opportunities, and establish clear and meaningful benchmarks of knowledge in areas of high relevance to global health.