Optimizing public health management with predictive analytics: leveraging the power of random forest

Community health outcomes significantly impact older populations' wellbeing and quality of life. Traditional analytical methods often struggle to accurately predict health risks at the community level due to their inability to capture complex, non-linear relationships among various health deter...

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Main Authors: Hongman Wang, Yifan Song, Hua Bi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2025-07-01
Series:Frontiers in Big Data
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Online Access:https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2025.1574683/full
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author Hongman Wang
Yifan Song
Yifan Song
Hua Bi
author_facet Hongman Wang
Yifan Song
Yifan Song
Hua Bi
author_sort Hongman Wang
collection DOAJ
description Community health outcomes significantly impact older populations' wellbeing and quality of life. Traditional analytical methods often struggle to accurately predict health risks at the community level due to their inability to capture complex, non-linear relationships among various health determinants. This study employs a Random Forest Algorithm (RFA) to address this limitation and enhance the predictive modeling of community health outcomes. By leveraging ensemble learning techniques and multi-factor analysis, this study aims to identify and quantify the relative contributions of key health indicators to risk assessment. The study begins with comprehensive data collection from diverse health sources, followed by a systematic preprocessing stage, which includes resolving missing values, normalizing variables, and encoding categorical features. Using bootstrap sampling, multiple decision trees were trained on random subsets of health data, ensuring variability in the model learning. The trees grow to full depth and aggregate their predictions to enhance the accuracy. An out-of-bag (OOB) error estimation was applied to refine the model and provide unbiased performance assessments, ensuring robust generalization to unseen data. The proposed model effectively analyzes key health indicators, ranking the feature importance to determine the most influential predictors of health risks. Results indicate that RFA achieves an accuracy rate of 92%, outperforming conventional prediction methods in terms of precision and recall. These findings underscore the efficacy of Random Forest in identifying critical health risk factors, paving the way for targeted and data-driven public health management strategies and interventions tailored to older adults.
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spelling doaj-art-df0c07b4802c4bf4bf61ece19630aac12025-08-20T03:28:55ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Big Data2624-909X2025-07-01810.3389/fdata.2025.15746831574683Optimizing public health management with predictive analytics: leveraging the power of random forestHongman Wang0Yifan Song1Yifan Song2Hua Bi3School of Humanities, Southeast University, Nanjing, ChinaSchool of Humanities, Southeast University, Nanjing, ChinaFaculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macau, Macao SAR, ChinaGeneral Hospital of the Central Theater of the People's Liberation Army, Wuhan, ChinaCommunity health outcomes significantly impact older populations' wellbeing and quality of life. Traditional analytical methods often struggle to accurately predict health risks at the community level due to their inability to capture complex, non-linear relationships among various health determinants. This study employs a Random Forest Algorithm (RFA) to address this limitation and enhance the predictive modeling of community health outcomes. By leveraging ensemble learning techniques and multi-factor analysis, this study aims to identify and quantify the relative contributions of key health indicators to risk assessment. The study begins with comprehensive data collection from diverse health sources, followed by a systematic preprocessing stage, which includes resolving missing values, normalizing variables, and encoding categorical features. Using bootstrap sampling, multiple decision trees were trained on random subsets of health data, ensuring variability in the model learning. The trees grow to full depth and aggregate their predictions to enhance the accuracy. An out-of-bag (OOB) error estimation was applied to refine the model and provide unbiased performance assessments, ensuring robust generalization to unseen data. The proposed model effectively analyzes key health indicators, ranking the feature importance to determine the most influential predictors of health risks. Results indicate that RFA achieves an accuracy rate of 92%, outperforming conventional prediction methods in terms of precision and recall. These findings underscore the efficacy of Random Forest in identifying critical health risk factors, paving the way for targeted and data-driven public health management strategies and interventions tailored to older adults.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2025.1574683/fullpredictive analyticsrandom forestpublic healthhealth risk factorsmachine learningcommunity-based health management
spellingShingle Hongman Wang
Yifan Song
Yifan Song
Hua Bi
Optimizing public health management with predictive analytics: leveraging the power of random forest
Frontiers in Big Data
predictive analytics
random forest
public health
health risk factors
machine learning
community-based health management
title Optimizing public health management with predictive analytics: leveraging the power of random forest
title_full Optimizing public health management with predictive analytics: leveraging the power of random forest
title_fullStr Optimizing public health management with predictive analytics: leveraging the power of random forest
title_full_unstemmed Optimizing public health management with predictive analytics: leveraging the power of random forest
title_short Optimizing public health management with predictive analytics: leveraging the power of random forest
title_sort optimizing public health management with predictive analytics leveraging the power of random forest
topic predictive analytics
random forest
public health
health risk factors
machine learning
community-based health management
url https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2025.1574683/full
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AT yifansong optimizingpublichealthmanagementwithpredictiveanalyticsleveragingthepowerofrandomforest
AT huabi optimizingpublichealthmanagementwithpredictiveanalyticsleveragingthepowerofrandomforest