Nursing PhD candidate receives IMPACT Seed grant for AI research

Paolo Roca, MSN, a PhD candidate in the UCLA Joe C. Wen School of Nursing, has been selected to receive the Charles Drew University IMPACT Seed Grant to examine the efficacy of artificial intelligence tools used for the self-management of diabetes. 

Roca’s study will work with adults living with Type 2 diabetes to develop community-prioritized standards for what safe and equitable AI advice should look like. He will audit three major AI platforms – ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini – against those standards and co-develop a clinician-facing checklist to help providers integrate these standards into care.

"The IMPACT Seed Grant lets me bring together the lived expertise of adults with diabetes in South LA, evidence-based diabetes care, and honest scrutiny of the AI tools patients are increasingly turning to,” said Roca. “I'm grateful to my UCLA mentors and to the CDU IMPACT Center for making this work possible."

The project is funded through the IMPACT Center at Charles R. Drew University, where Roca also holds a faculty appointment, with methodological consultation from Dr. Dante Tolentino at UCLA Joe C. Wen School of Nursing.