Premed question and grander scope?

I’ve been a longtime lurker on this subreddit and have admired premeds and med students since I returned to community college about three years ago. I struggle with anxiety/panic disorders and came to the conclusion that medicine wouldn’t be a great match for me as I don’t think I could work well with having too much responsibility on individual lives. I am planning on transferring to a 4 year university this fall with the intention of majoring in cognitive science and I like the major for its interdisciplinary program at specific universities.

I however want to conduct research and still help improve people’s lives. I want to see if I could be a scientist in some clinical settings or work on AI to implement on digital health systems but I want to interact and be involved in a clinical or maybe some management role on a committee or board. My question that I keep coming back to is, am I just circling back to a physician role? I’ve done public health internships and worked with the community and am interested in shadowing a doctor potentially but I also have so many other ambitions and feel like I’m waisting my time on a career I can’t even pursue. Has anyone else dealt with some thing like this before?

I like helping people but being a provider to a few patients feels to narrow, I want to provide research or new ideas to a bigger audience or participants and feel like I can help more people that way. Are their fields in medicine where they help more people or manage other programs while still providing some individual care? I also feel like I’m way behind in my education as a non traditional student that would have to still get through 2 years of undergrad, 4 years of med school and then residency or some specialty training to even pursue that career path. I just wanted to ask people who’ve dealt with this in some capacity and ask for some advice, so any help would be awesome. Thank you.