Innovating in Health Innovation.
Health and human rights are inextricably linked, and all social innovation has consequences on both. In the age of technology, this understanding is too often absent in the minds of modern-day innovators, and neglecting to put humanity at the core of innovation contributes to the growing gap of inequity among the global community. Despite living in a world where we are the most connected we have been in human history, we continue to remove ourselves from human connection and suffering. The need for our world to change the innovation process from being profit driven to a society that puts humanity at the forefront of design thinking and innovation is critical for global health.
Globally, human rights violations occur every day due to failed and unenforced policies, laws, and negative consequences of innovation. Plastic is an excellent example of an innovation once held as a novel creation that is now the culprit of a global crisis. The United Nations climate experts estimate that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than sea life. The Ocean Cleanup, a startup that originated in the Netherlands and launched in the San Francisco Bay Area, mobilized an idea to collect the world’s trash into a global initiative on cleaning up the world’s oceans. Projects like The Ocean Cleanup are why we created the Global Impact Challenge 2019: Health & Human Rights Hackathon.
The Global Impact Challenge is a project that stems from our team’s shared belief in compassion for the health of humanity. Each of us come from different backgrounds and have different identities and diverse interests in public health, yet we share core values. Our friendship, as well as our professors at the Center of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights, inspired us to take action and create the hackathon. After all, SPH preaches “Think. Teach. Do.” Why not do?
Traditionally, a hackathon focuses on leveraging technology as the only solution to ”hacking” our world’s issues, especially in a technological innovation hub like Boston. However, these platforms silo different perspectives and are not inclusive of multiple stakeholders. We believe that the absence of any person during the process of innovation deteriorates the ability to create, maintain, and promote the health of the global community. Therefore, we made it our prerogative to change the hackathon ideology to be more inclusive by putting health and humanity at the intersection of multidisciplinary thinking. Our hackathon thus became a social innovation focused on spreading the knowledge of health and human rights while engaging all students and community members to collaboratively turn global impact ideas into reality.
The hackathon gave each participating team 24 hours to hack a human rights issue affecting health. On the last day of the hackathon, all teams pitched their creations. The winning teams automatically advanced to the Innovate@BU Innovation Week showcase and pitch finale. From there, the winning team will secure a spot on the Boston University Summer Accelerator, a $10,000 prize to mobilize their ideas into prototypes.
Our aspirations for this project were to challenge one another to be the best humans we can be for our planet while unifying a diverse group of people who are individually determined to innovate for humanity. Six months ago, we came up with an idea in a cramped living room, and it turned into Boston’s first-ever health and human rights hackathon. Today, we are one step closer to a healthier world.
Anisha Borthakur (SPH ’19), Mackenzie Bullard (SPH ’19), and Valentina Vega (SPH ’19) are the leadership team behind the Global Impact Challenge: Health and Human Rights Hackathon, which took place April 5-7.