To: Professional, Academic, Institutional, and Industry Collaborators
From: Ethan H. Freedman
Date: January 2026
Re: Orientation, Research, and Practice in Human Connection, Health Education, Technology, AI, Social Intervention, and Social Work
Overview
This memorandum documents and synthesizes the work, learning, and research that orient my professional and academic practice entering 2026. Across 2025, I grounded my work in a central inquiry: how human connection, health education, and digital literacy is being reshaped by technology, AI, institutions, and social conditions, and how evidence based and human centered research and design can intervene responsibly in that change on a macro scale.
My practice sits at the intersection of social work, research, product development, and technology ethics for social systems. Through my graduate training at Columbia University School of Social Work (CSSW), research at Social Intervention Group (SIG), collaborative work within the gAyI project, applied research with Puberry, and independent inquiry into human connection, digital intimacies, relational life, and human behavior, I seek to integrate rigorous empirical methods with vast lived human experiences. This memo reflects on the takeaways from 2025, while outlining insights that shape my direction in 2026.
Human Connection in a Period of Transformation
A defining realization of 2025 has been that technology goes beyond mediating human connection towards structurally being reorganized by it. Digital platforms increasingly shape how people form relationships, learn about human connection, access care, and understand themselves and others. These shifts are uneven, often opaque, and deeply consequential for mental health, equity, and social belonging.
I continue to see some recurring tensions between the scale of the domain, and the care required for these topics to bridge effectively. There is a mistrust with automation, AI, and there is a major difference between access to information and understanding. These tensions reinforce the necessity for a human centered approach that prioritizes dignity, relational safety, and accountability. This doubles in realms historically shaped by stigma, silence, and moral regulation.
Graduate Training and Product Oriented Research at Columbia CSSW
My master's training at Columbia CSSW has provided a critical foundation for integrating research, intervention, and organizational design. Through coursework and applied research, I have deepened my capacity to translate evidence into practice capable of informing policy. I designed interventions attentive to power, culture, and context alongside evaluating programs for effectiveness and ethical impact. This development expanded my engagement with product oriented thinking to consider how research can inform the design of digital tools, platforms, and infrastructures that support healthier forms of connection rather than extractive engagement. The year clarified that research within social work is uniquely positioned to shape the future of technology as a proactive facilitator of humane systems.
Research Practice at the Social Intervention Group (SIG)
At SIG, my work is embedded in interdisciplinary research addressing interventions for AI technologies in domains of Health Education, Human Connection, and LGBTQ+. Within this environment I have gained first hand experience with community engaged research methodologies, implementation science and intervention fidelity, and ethical research governance and IRB process. My involvement in gAyI project has been particularly formative, reinforcing the value of participatory research and iterative feedback loops when studying sensitive aspects of human behavior and the social condition. These experiences sharpened my understanding that data about people must be produced with them, not merely about them.
Puberty and Benchmarking LLMs in Health Education
Through my work with Puberry, I began the stages of an emerging research on benchmarking large language models. This work raises urgent questions about accuracy, bias, and hallucination in educational AI. There is a risk of decontextualized and moralized health information that necessitates domain specific benchmarks rooted in pedagogy, not just performance. After 2025, I understand that technical capability alone is an insufficient measure of educational value. Without grounding in developmental science, public health, and ethics, AI systems risk reproducing harm at scale – especially when facing youth. CSSW, SIG, Puberry, and I are on a road to changing this with research informed practice and practice informed research. Insights in this continue to shape my approach to the research project as I apply for grants to ask the questions that leave me up at night for the foreseeable future.
Independent Research on Human Connection Domains
Alongside my institutional work, I continue independent research on domains of human connection like attachment, social psychology, digital intimacies, human behavior, and human sexuality. These projects explore how people learn about connection and intimacy (defined as closeness) outside formal systems, through media, technology, culture, peer networks, AI, and all within an evolving world. A consistent pattern emerged across inquiries through 2025: people are seeking language, frameworks, and tools to make sense of relational life and are often navigating fragmented, contradictory, or harmful sources of information. This reinforced my commitment to research and design that treats intimacy as a public health and social justice issue, centers pleasure, consent, and agency alongside safety, and recognizes that an understanding of human connection is life long and ever evolving.
Looking Ahead to 2026
Entering 2026, my work is oriented toward deepening my integrated practice: I seek to acquire my licensure post graduation from my master's candidacy. This is to solidify the commitment I made to myself in acquiring the professional and academic education in order to advance research that informs humane technologies, design interventions that respect complexity, and contribute to interdisciplinary efforts that place human connection, health literacy, and digital literacy at the center of innovation. This memo presents a consolidated understanding of direction for future work, but uncertainty remains around what it will look like to pursue. As I look beyond graduation in May, 2026, I am rooted at intersections of human connection, technology, education, public health, social work, and I exercise empirically grounded, relationally attuned, and responsive ways people connect, care, and make meaning in a rapidly evolving world.