Dr. Davis Austria
Nurse scientist & Assistant Professor working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, health equity, and patient-centered communication.
DNP · MSN · MBA · RN · NI-BC · CPHQ · PMP
About
When AI systems enter clinical care, do they work equitably for the patients who already bear the highest disease burdens?
Dr. Davis Austria is a nurse scientist and Assistant Professor for Health and Social Informatics in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Xavier University of Louisiana — the nation's only Catholic HBCU. His research sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, health disparities science, and patient-centered communication. He centers BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, low-health-literacy patients, and underserved populations across the Gulf South.
He is a Hopelab HBCU Translational Science Fellow and an NIH AIM-AHEAD CLINAQ Fellow, and a former VA Quality Scholars (VAQS) Fellow. He leads The DoubleSlash Project, a co-design initiative that brings young people into the room where AI mental health tools are designed, studied, and held to account.
Appointments & Training
Appointments & Fellowships
- Assistant Professor, Health and Social InformaticsCurrent
Xavier University of Louisiana · Dept. of Public Health Sciences - HBCU Translational Science FellowCurrent
Hopelab - AIM-AHEAD CLINAQ FellowCurrent
National Institutes of Health - Health Disparities Research Institute (HDRI) Scholar2026
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) - VA Quality Scholars (VAQS) Fellow2021–2024
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Education & Certifications
- DNP, Nursing InformaticsDoctorate
University of Minnesota - MS, Nursing InformaticsMaster's
New York University - MBA, EntrepreneurshipMaster's
Babson College - Board Certified Nurse Informaticist (RN, NI-BC)ANCC
American Nurses Credentialing Center - Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ)NAHQ
National Association for Healthcare Quality - Project Management Professional (PMP)PMI
Project Management Institute
Research & Projects
Building technology with the people it affects.
The DoubleSlash Project
A youth co-design initiative building AI mental health tools with BIPOC and LGBTQ+ teens — as co-designers, not test subjects. Funded by the Hopelab HBCU Translational Science Fellowship.
Visit the projectEvaluating LLMs for equitable patient education
A three-arm comparative evaluation of large language models for the readability, cultural responsiveness, and personalization of AI-generated patient discharge education — operationalizing his original Readability, Disparity-Responsive Design, and Personalization (R-DP) Framework.
About the programOpEddie
An AI pre-editor for op-ed drafts, built from the Public Voices Fellowship coaching rubric. It scores a draft against a fixed standard — missing links, unnamed sources, overclaims, hook/thesis coupling — and raises the questions a human editor asks first. It diagnoses; it never composes. Passcode access.
Open OpEddieAlgorithmic equity
Surfacing where AI systems misread, misgender, or overlook the young people most likely to turn to them.
Youth co-design
Participatory methods (YPAR) that position young people as authors of the tools meant to serve them.
Health informatics
Bridging clinical quality, nursing science, and data systems to make digital health safer and fairer.
Research Interests
Op-Eds
Public writing on AI, young people, and the institutions that are supposed to protect them.
A Democracy Cannot Run on an AI Model
AI is already embedded in election administration. Vote-counting must stay transparent and verifiable before it goes any further.
AI Tutors Are Praising Instead of Teaching. Here's Why That's Hurting Students
Sycophantic AI removes the productive struggle that learning depends on.
Teaching
Graduate courses in the MS in Health Informatics program and undergraduate public health at Xavier University of Louisiana.
Introduction to Epidemiology
Undergraduate foundations of epidemiologic methods, measures of disease frequency, and study design.
Health Informatics Project Management
Planning, leading, and delivering health IT and informatics projects — scope, risk, stakeholders, and implementation in clinical settings.
Fundamentals of Health Informatics
Core concepts of health information systems, clinical data, standards, and the informatics workforce.
Privacy and Secure Protection of Health Data
Health data privacy, security, and regulatory frameworks for informatics practice.
Database Architecture and Administration
Relational database design, SQL, and administration for health data systems.
Presentations & Talks
- Jul 2026CLINAQ: A clinician-centered evaluation of large language models for patient educationPodium presentation · Summer Institute in Nursing Informatics (SINI 2026), University of Maryland School of Nursing, Baltimore, MD
- Jul 2026Demonstration paper · AINurse-26 workshopArtificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME 2026), Ottawa, Canada
- Jul 2026CLINAQ Fellowship projectPoster blast · NIH AIM-AHEAD Consortium Meeting, San Diego, CA
- 2026Artificial Intelligence in Health, Environment, and Workforce SystemsPanelist · NCPHC Student Panel
Selected Publications
- 2026Austria D, McCollister B, Lindsey JE, Arowolo M, Okon M. From Output Errors to Workflow Harm: A Practitioner-Audit Method for LLM-Mediated Research. medRxiv preprint, posted August 17, 2026. doi:10.64898/2026.08.13.26360414
- 2026Arowolo MO, Okon ME, Austria DR, Azam M, Abdulsalam SO. SPINET-KSP: A Multi-Modal LLM-Graph Foundation Model for Contextual Prediction of Kinase-Substrate-Phosphatase Triads. Kinases and Phosphatases, 4(1), 3. doi:10.3390/kinasesphosphatases4010003
- 2026Austria D, Del Toro J, Axon RN, Callaway-Lane C, Kramer BJ, Pope C. Closing a home-based primary care referral gap: development and system-wide adoption of an interprofessional screening consult for high-risk Veterans. Home Health Care Management & Practice. In press. doi:10.1177/10848223261485486
- 2026Austria D, Williams G, Girardo C, Arowolo M, Mishra M, Pope C, Axon RN, Hill J. A clinician-centered evaluation framework for large language models in patient education: integrating the Technology Acceptance Model and Medical Condition Regard Scale. JMIR Formative Research. Accepted, in press. Preprint 100423
- 2025Austria DR. Health Data Fundamentals with SQL Server: An AI-Enhanced Open Guide. LOUIS Pressbooks (open-access textbook).
- 2025Sloss EA, Owoyemi A, Mishra AK, … Austria D, et al. Development of the TrendBurden Survey: Assessing Perceived Documentation Burden among Health Professionals in the United States. Applied Clinical Informatics, 16(3), 662–675.
- 2024Austria D, McConnell C, Pope C. Hospital Inpatient Nutrition Service Errors and Patient Safety Interventions: A Scoping Review. Journal of Patient Safety, 20(4), 272–278.
Full list available on ORCID.
Contact
Open to collaboration, speaking, and student inquiries. Reach me at [email protected].