Introducing How We Feel
An app developed to address the COVID-19 testing gap
Pinterest co-founder Ben Sibermann and Feng Zhang first started talking about the enormous value of connecting citizens to the global health and research community in the middle of March 2020. They saw how quickly COVID-19 was spreading. To them, it felt like a critical moment to finally build a bridge between citizens and scientists that they’d always wanted.
In April, they launched the How We Feel Project, a nonprofit created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and an important first step towards building that critical bridge.
Along with a committed team of builders, they developed the How We Feel app to help fill the gap left by inadequate testing. The app prompts users — healthy or not — to share how they’re feeling, their age, and their zip code. If a person is not feeling well, they can also share their symptoms and health conditions. These daily health “check-ins” only take about 30 seconds, and doctors, researchers, and decision-makers use the data to fight the spread of COVID-19.
Ben and Feng worked with health experts like Xihong Lin, a leading statistical and epidemiological researcher, analyzing COVID-19 data to assist with public health policies related to the pandemic. Xihong has been a key collaborator on HWF, helping the team use check-in data to better understand the outbreak and develop appropriate intervention measures to control it.
The data gives researchers like Xihong Lin a bird’s eye view of COVID-19 that helps them:
- Predict which regions are on the brink of an outbreak.
- Uncover epidemiological characteristics of the outbreak and how the disease spreads through communities.
- Identify emerging hotspots.
- Study the time course of symptoms as the disease spreads.
- Estimate region-specific testing needs and strategies.
- Evaluate whether interventions such as social distancing are reducing transmission.
- Provide policymakers and public health leaders with the information needed to tune their responses to their communities.
The HWF team is looking forward to making a meaningful contribution with the critical information and data that How We Feel collects. Together, we can share information to help stop COVID-19. A 30-second check-in is all it takes. Plus, the HWF team is donating a meal to Feeding America with each new user who checks-in on the app.
Explore the How We Feel app today!
