Most conversations about AI in public health start from what technology can do, then ask how to manage the risks. This workshop inverts that logic. Starting from values such as dignity, self-determination, belonging, trust, and vitality, participants will use futuring, a structured methodology from strategic foresight, to imagine the public health futures they actually want, then work backwards to the decisions and actions needed today to get there.

The workshop introduces backcasting as a practical planning tool: grounded in a shared values set, applied to a concrete AI deployment scenario, and designed to surface the governance, workforce, and design choices that sit upstream of harm. Participants will work through two contrasting future scenarios built around the same real-world AI application. Small groups will develop their own preferable future and produce a draft backcast pathway identifying the near-term actions, policy settings, and community relationships that would need to be in place for that future to be reachable.

The session is accessible to participants with no prior futuring or AI technical knowledge. It offers a replicable methodology that public health practitioners, researchers, and policy makers can apply in their own contexts beyond the conference.