COVID-19 Global Hackathon 2.0: Social & Mental Health
fostering connection, expanding resilience, soothing spirits, & preserving civil sanity
Update: Please join us on September 8 at 1 PM PDT for a round table discussion on mental health technology in the age of COVID featuring Glen Moriarty (7Cups); Arun Gupta (Quartet Health); Aditi Merchant, Allen Zhou, and Anthony Zhou (Big & Mini); Dr. Krutika Gohil, Alberto Hernández Cerezo, and Johanna Klinger (CareCards); and Yuan Wang (OpenABA).
You can view presentations from CareCards, Big & Mini, and OpenABA at these links.
TLDR: congratulations to Big & Mini, CareCards, OpenABA, Afya Bora, Calm On!, and ShockTalk.
The pandemic is burning through the world, and there’s no end in sight. Countries like the U.S. are struggling to remain functional as cases and death rates climb, and even the safest places must remain vigilant as researchers race to develop treatments and vaccines. As the months drag on, the toll on everyone’s mental health grows. Whether you continue to isolate or struggle through difficult circumstances, even the most resilient among us often find things incredibly difficult. Social ills such as substance abuse, overdoses, and domestic violence have risen. Rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide are sharply up. And when we look ahead and see things such as a massive wave of evictions, we worry for the future.
WHAT
This is why we at the COVID-19 Technology Task Force created the COVID-19 Global Hackathon 2.0: Social & Mental Health: to push forward solutions to help people every better cope with the mental health and social challenges caused by distancing, isolation, and the pandemic’s economic hardship.
From July 3–12, in collaboration with groups such as AARP, Quaranteam, and the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, we convened an online hackathon to bring together developers, designers, product specialists, strategists, researchers, community leaders, activists, mental health professionals, and more to forge new paths for connection and healing.
RESULTS
Participants submitted their hacks through Devpost, a company that has been powering online hackathons since 2009 and very generously donated their services to us. We had 670 participants and 118 team submissions. In alphabetical order, we are delighted to share with you a selection of the strongest hacks submitted.
Top projects: Big & Mini, CareCards, and OpenABA
Big & Mini is a nonprofit that created an online platform to connect seniors (Bigs) with young people (Minis) to share life lessons, experiences, and stories. The connection helps seniors, who usually must live very isolated lives due to the pandemic, with the loneliness they struggle with, and the intergenerational knowledge transfer helps young people, who are often wondering how to develop resiliency and build lives filled with meaning in the face of such an uncertain future.
Team:
CareCards is a collection of card-based, interactive psychological tests that help people learn more about their emotional state. CareCards functions as a self-assessment pre-diagnostic mental health tool that provides follow-up as needed: some people need connections to local therapists, and others might benefit from digital training sessions to help with anxiety or stress.
Team:
OpenABA is a telehealth tool for childhood autism therapists. It’s the first telehealth version of Applied Behavior Analysis, a type of therapy that works to improve behaviors such as social skills. OpenABA provides tools to providers for real-time interaction in specially-designed activities.
Team:
Afya Bora is an appointment scheduling platform that will allow Tanzanian residents to schedule an in-person or online appointment with a general physician or specialist. Seeking health care in Tanzania typically means waiting in line at the hospital for hours, which is inconvenient in better times and dangerous during COVID times.
Team:
Calm On! is a prototype mobile adventure game that promotes emotional intelligence and healthy mental health habits. In the attention economy, which has only expanded during shelter-in-place, elementary school children are especially at risk for being manipulated by products and services that do not promote healthy mental habits.
Team:
ShockTalk is a prototype telehealth platform that will offer teletherapy services for native peoples by native providers. American Indians and Alaska Natives experience large disparities in access to care and health outcomes, in part because some do not seek out medical services due to complexities around the native experience. ShockTalk’s key insight is that in order to better serve native peoples, you need to build tools that meet them on their own terms.
Team:
- Austin Serio
- Sutton King
- Urban Indigenous Collective, a volunteer organization specializing in NA/AN issues
WHO
We would like to thank our many collaborators and especially all our incredible volunteers:
- Anima Sarah LaVoy
- Andy Moss
- Arvind Venkataramani
- Bill Hunt
- Colin Clancy
- Danielle Diamond
- Danny Friday
- Deb Shultz
- Erika Cheung
- Erin Knobler
- Grace Shinn
- Jazz Tigan
- John Borthwick
- Jonathan Cain
- Kameka Dempsey
- Lily Geraty
- Lonnie Rae
- Patricia Parkinson
- Phaedra Poliquin
- Rick Robinson
- Ron Conway
- All of our amazing mentors, advisors, and supporters
- Special thanks to everyone with the COVID-19 Tech Task Force.
HOW
We’ve published an article detailing the mechanics of organizing an online hackathon during the age of COVID. We’re providing a summary of some key insights here as well:
Online hackathons, like many aspects of our world, have been developing into new forms throughout the pandemic. How do you create space for people to experience the kinds of serendipitous interactions they used to have in-person with other participants, experts, and supporting companies and organizations?
We used Airtable and Slack to make it easy to visually learn about some of the other participants and mentors. We had around 80 subject matter experts serve as mentors on areas such as brain health, violence, therapy, grief, and counseling, clinical psychologists, people who work with seniors, the homeless, people of color and native communities, children, and more. We encouraged our 670 participants to post about what they were working on to an Idea Board as a way to drive community engagement and support. Due to some clever work of Colin Clancy with Quaranteam, the Idea Board for each project used a Zapier workflow to automatically create a project-specific channel within our Slack workspace.
Within our Slack workspace, we also had channels dedicated to our different focus and technical areas:
#0-help
#1-get-started
#announcements
#datasets
#hacker-introductions
#ideas
#mentor-introductions
#mentor-private
#skill-dev-mobile
#skill-machine-learning
#skill-web-dev
#topic-child-care
#topic-death-and-grieving
#topic-homelessness
#topic-mental-health
#topic-racial-equity-inclusion
#topic-seniors
#topic-social-connection
#water-cooler
As participants began to register, we discovered that for some, this was their first hackathon. To help them think more deeply than “I have an idea, now where are my engineers?” our collaborators at Quaranteam developed a Hackathon Field Guide. It’s a document that offers suggestions on how to develop a project from idea through execution, including observations on human-centered design, team formation, and operating principles. Unusual for a hackathon, we encouraged everyone to think about how they might develop their idea from a hack all the way through what it would take to deploy and ultimately be of service to people who need help, and we’re still actively supporting a number of the teams, including the ones listed above, as they continue to work on their visions.
