HALE Chair for Health, AI, and Learning for Global Equity
Learning and artificial intelligence for more equitable global health.
Composition created by ChatGPT, 2025. Inspired by the spirit of Miró’s works
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 created by ChatGPT, 2025. Inspired by the spirit of Miró’s works
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 bringing together artificial intelligence and university education to promote more equitable and sustainable health worldwide.
Mission and objectives
The HALE Chair's mission is to advance global health by identifying and addressing major health challenges marked by clear inequity and requiring solutions that engage disciplines beyond the health sciences.
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. In doing so, they can help prevent the structural failures that continue to perpetuate inequity and preventable suffering.
The general objectives of the HALE Chair are as follows:
- To consolidate an international training network that integrates the social determinants of health into higher education, beginning with road safety as the initial area of application (ROAD Project).
- To produce educational materials, initially HALE Capsules: brief, self-contained, rigorous and focused learning units that can be adapted to different languages, learner diversities and cultural contexts. In the future they may be combined into structured learning paths known as HALE Paths.
- To incorporate these capsules across university curricula in a variety of disciplines, particularly those outside the health domain, adapting them to each academic context.
- To leverage artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies to create, personalise and disseminate content oriented towards health equity.
- To promote interinstitutional academic collaboration, especially through the global network of Jesuit universities.
- To strengthen health-related capacity-building in low- and middle-income countries.
- To share the knowledge generated so it can be incorporated into artificial intelligence tools’ learning processes and improve the quality of their outputs.
The team
Collaborating members
Advisory Council
HALE Capsules
Central to the Chair’s mission is the development of pedagogical outputs, initially focused on HALE Capsules: brief, self-contained, adaptable and rigorous educational units. These units are designed to integrate essential health-related concepts into university curricula in disciplines such as engineering, law, economics, communication and education, and are aligned with defined competencies and learning outcomes.
HALE Capsules are conceived as standalone learning resources which, in the future, may also be combined into structured learning paths (HALE Paths). They are designed to provide conceptual depth while maintaining clarity and flexibility, enabling lecturers to integrate them easily into existing courses.
Their thematic prioritisation is guided by clear criteria, focusing on large-scale problems and significant inequities, particularly those that disproportionately affect populations in low- and middle-income countries. Road safety, through the ROAD Project, constitutes the first area of application and the methodological starting point for the Chair.
The production of HALE Capsules relies on digital tools and artificial intelligence, which support script development, activity design, audiovisual production, cultural and pedagogical adaptation and multilingual translation. This approach ensures that each Capsule can be tailored to different academic settings and localised with minimal effort. All Capsules will be hosted on institutional servers and made accessible through a dedicated search interface. They will be released under Creative Commons licences (or equivalent models), ensuring free access and use worldwide, provided that proper attribution is maintained.
To ensure educational quality, the HALE Chair will implement a quality assurance and evaluation framework. This will include assessing how well each Capsule aligns with existing curricula and learning objectives, measuring its impact on students’ knowledge, attitudes and skills, and gathering feedback from both lecturers and students.
The initial development of HALE Capsules will be undertaken by Comillas lecturers trained in the necessary technical and pedagogical skills. As the initiative expands, a common training framework will be established, enabling the progressive incorporation of academic staff from Jesuit universities worldwide and from other academic institutions. This growing network will enrich the diversity, cultural relevance and global reach of the HALE Chair’s pedagogical production, strengthening its contribution to a more equitable approach to global health.
ACCREDITATION SYSTEMS
The accreditation initiative aims to create reliable, accessible and internationally recognised mechanisms through which individuals can formally demonstrate their understanding of key health-related topics. These systems are designed to serve both learners—who may come from diverse educational backgrounds—and institutions, employers and funders seeking trustworthy indicators of technical capability. The overarching goal is to ensure that people worldwide can certify their expertise in areas crucial to health equity.
To achieve this, the Chair will develop a model that integrates academic rigour with advanced technological tools. Artificial intelligence will play a central role in building high-quality item banks, refining test questions through continuous performance analysis, adjusting difficulty levels, and enabling multilingual assessments. Exams will be administered through the University’s secure digital assessment platform, which includes identity verification systems to ensure the integrity of the process. Additional modalities—such as supervised online exams, in-person sessions at partner institutions, or oral assessments—may be used where appropriate, depending on the subject matter.
Accreditations will have a defined period of validity, reflecting the need for regular knowledge updates in rapidly evolving fields. A sustainable fee structure will support exam administration and system maintenance, complemented by potential sponsorships to facilitate access for candidates from under-resourced settings. Through these mechanisms, the accreditation system aims to balance global reach, affordability and long-term viability.
Institutional legitimacy is central to the success of the accreditation model. For each thematic area, advisory groups composed of reputable sector-specific professional organisations will provide oversight and credibility. Instead of relying solely on academic institutions, these groups will include entities directly involved in practice, regulation or implementation, ensuring that accredited competencies align with real-world needs and expectations. Their endorsement will reinforce the system’s authority for employers, governmental bodies, development agencies and international organisations.
Ultimately, the HALE accreditation systems seek to strengthen global professional capacity, promote equity in access to training and career opportunities, and create transparent, meaningful benchmarks for knowledge in areas of high public health relevance.