menstruation

AI-Human Collaboration: From Quant to Qual, Turning Data into Meaning

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Written by Paulina Bondaronek and Siobhán Healy-Cullen

Image depicting AI-Human collab created using rather primitive prompting in Ideogram.

Machine-assisted topic analysis (MATA) aims to use the efficiency of Artificial Intelligence and combines it with the nuanced and rich insights derived from qualitative analysis. I call this a “meaningful AI-Human collaboration”. MATA was developed in response to a significant challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic; I was tasked with analysing and providing actionable insights based on 16,000 free-text responses to the question “How could we improve the service” (rapidly). The service in question was the NHS Test & Trace, which managed the pandemic response in England. With only my eyeballs to rely on (…and my expertise as a Behavioural Scientist), I recognised the potential of technology to speed up this task.

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Period power? Ideas for intervening in menstrual poverty

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By Tracy Morison & Sheralee Wootton, August 2019

Recently we observed Menstrual Hygiene Day, an annual awareness day on 28th May initiated in 2014 by the German-based NGO WASH United to shine a light on menstrual hygiene management (MHM). Specifically, this day seeks to publicise ‘period poverty’: the lack of access to adequate menstrual products faced by many in low income countries and, it is becoming increasingly apparent, by poorer women1 in rich countries. The movement’s vision is:

“…to create a world in which every woman and girl is empowered to manage her menstruation safely, hygienically, with confidence and without shame, where no woman or girl is limited by something as natural and normal as her period”.

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