Dear Patient, Health care Provider, Artist, Designer, Parent, Kid, Techie, Engineer, Maker, Tinkerer, Scientist, Advocate, Researcher, Administrator, Business/Community Partner, Public Health Professional:

We at Healthdesignby.us are a community of individuals passionate about health, technology, and participatory design. We are sponsoring a community event on August 16th, 2014, at the University of Michigan for all of us to meet and learn from each other; we hope that you can attend!

We Make Health Fest
Saturday, Aug 16th, 2014
University of Michigan
Palmer Commons, Great Lakes Rooms

This is an event inspired by the maker movement but with the unique twist of having a focus on health.

What is the Maker Movement?

According to Wikipedia, it’s a technology-focused DIY (Do It Yourself) Movement, which emphasizes “learning-through-doing…in an informal, networked, peer-led, and shared learning motivated by fun and self-fulfillment..Maker culture encourages novel applications of technologies, and the exploration of intersections between traditionally separate domains and ways of working.”

If you are curious about the maker movement and live in the MI area check out this event in Detroit to get a flavor of the types of activities that might be showcased. @pfanderson also gives a great description of what makers are all about. Our event will be more intimate and uniquely focused on health as a desired goal.

Why the We Make Health Fest?

We are holding this event because we want the opportunity to meet a broader community (both local and virtual) interested in the participatory design of tools and technologies for health.

What types of things will be showcased at our fest? That depends on whether you will be gracing us with your presence (in person or virtually)! Please click on the link below to indicate your desire to share and contribute:

I want to join the movement and contribute!

To give you a flavor of the projects that our team is working on, we will be blogging and sharing examples on our blog and website (just a landing page for now but project descriptions coming soon!)

• Read this post to learn more about the origins of Healthdesignby.us.
• Here is a sneak peek of projects in progress that we as a team have been working on focused on type 1 diabetes. Can you tell we are having a blast?

• We are very interested in seeing other examples of healthdesignby.us across multiple disciplines, diseases, and populations. What are you working on that you can share, either at the event or virtually? We would love to hear about it. Email us at makehealth@umich.edu, tweet to us using the hashtag #makehealth (CLICK HERE for including the hashtag and our Twitter handle automatically), or post to us on our Facebook account!

How Can I Participate?

Again, we want to stress, your participation can be virtual as well as local! Fill out this Google form to contribute (even it’s just virtual support!)

Website: http://makehealth.us/

Twitter: @MakeHealthUM

Google Plus: Make Health UM

The We Make Health Fest is a project of HealthDesignBy.Us; Email: healthdesignbyus@gmail.com; Twitter: @healthbyus; Facebook: healthdesignby.us; Blog: https://medium.com/@healthbyus

YOU are a key contributor to Healthdesignby.us. Sign up here to learn more about how you can join and contribute! Healthdesignby.us is brought to you by Joyce Lee, Matt Kenyon and a local and virtual community!