EpiNarrate: Agentic Generation of Grounded Narratives from Epidemiological Scenario Projections
Computation and Language
Summary
The authors created a system called EpiNarrate to help write clear public health reports using complex data like COVID-19 projections. Instead of relying on AI to directly write summaries, their method separates math calculations from the language writing, making the summaries more accurate and informative. They organize data carefully, check for consistency, and pick the most interesting facts to share. Tests showed their approach produces reports that cover important patterns better and sound like expert-written texts.
Authors
Rituparna Datta, Srini Venkatramanan, Bryan L. Lewis, Yiqi Su, Harry Hochheiser, Lucie Contamin, Parantapa Bhattacharya, Naren Ramakrishnan, Anil Vullikanti
Abstract
Generation of clear and accessible public health narratives is critical for communicating complex epidemiological projections to policymakers and the general public at large. Such narratives require more than simply reporting numbers: projections must be contextualized and quantitatively grounded across multiple dimensions. Further, projections are often derived from large ensemble datasets which combine intervention assumptions, geographic and demographic strata, outcomes, time horizons, and uncertainty quantiles. However, directly using large language models (LLMs) to summarize and contextualize such data often leads to inconsistencies, omissions, and fragile behavior. We introduce an agentic framework (EpiNarrate) for public health report generation that separates structured numerical reasoning from natural-language generation. The framework first extracts scenario axes and organizes them into a partial-order schema, enabling systematic traversal of the underlying multidimensional space. It then constructs an augmented dataset and derives valid quantitative statements through a comparison grammar that enforces semantic and arithmetic consistency. To balance coverage and non-redundancy, we introduce an interestingness-driven selection mechanism based on maximum-entropy principles. Experiments on the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub demonstrate that our model produces narratives with improved factual grounding and broader coverage of salient epidemiological patterns, while preserving the style of expert-written reports.