Race to Better Health

MIT Hacking Racism and Atrius Health host virtual hackathon to advance health equity

Upcoming Hackathon seeks to foster innovation to support Health Equity aims with a focus on community engagement.

On November 12-14, Race to Better Health (RBH), MIT Hacking Racism, and Atrius Health will host the Engineering Health Equity Hackathon, a unique collaborative virtual event that seeks to address ambitious Health Equity goals within the Atrius Health system. The hackathon provides an opportunity for participants to develop practical, durable solutions for improving clinical care by addressing social determinants of health and other root causes of disparities.

During the hackathon, participants will work in teams to investigate and define a specific problem, identify the driving factors behind how different populations access, engage in, and receive care, understand what resources exist and what solutions have been previously attempted to address health inequities, and innovate a potential solution with the input of diverse mentors and experts from the sponsoring organizations and community at large. At the end of the hackathon, winners will be decided by a diverse panel of judges and gain access to mentorship and support from Atrius Health to help kickstart the development of these solutions during incubation.

The event has four areas of focus, including:

1. Diversifying clinical workforces to increase representation and support for patients
2. Improving women’s health and pregnancy outcomes to address women’s particular health needs
3. Expanding access to and adoption of preventive care to improve short and long-term health outcomes
4. Improving communication of social determinants of health to providers to better develop comprehensive and individualized treatment plans

This event represents a unique collaboration across three organizations:

1. Atrius Health, a local leader in outpatient and primary care
2. MIT Hacking Racism Challenge, an organization with expertise in hackathons using multi-stakeholder, design thinking, and problem-centric approaches to tackle issues of structural racism
3. Race to Better Health, a nonprofit organization dedicated to Engineering Health Equity via patient-centered, interdisciplinary interventions
   

The virtual event will be preceded by four pre-hackathon sessions for participants to begin learning about the depth and complexities of health inequity and provide them with the tools to problem solve these issues.

"Atrius Health is proud to work alongside MIT Hacking Racism and Race to Better Health in our shared efforts to break down health disparities and combat structural racism in all forms,” said Atrius Health Chief Medical Officer Joe Kimura, MD, MPH. “Through this event, we look forward to further engaging directly with our patients and community to advance health equity in everything we do as a practice.”

Hackathons foster collaboration between patients, clinicians, scientists, engineers, programmers, coders, user designers, and other stakeholders to find creative, feasible solutions for a given issue. By engaging the community and local healthcare ecosystem, this event strives for diversity of thoughts, perspectives, and frameworks from its participants and mentors.

“In founding the MIT Hacking Racism Challenge, the goal was to provide a framework and build a community and ecosystem to dismantle racial injustice in healthcare delivery and address the social determinants of health,” said co-founder Freddy Nguyen, MD, PhD. “Building on the MIT ethos of ‘mens et manus’ or ‘mind and hand’, we have a deep commitment to accelerating innovation from ideation to impact to solve challenging problems.”

“We want health equity to move beyond a set of ideas and principles towards real actions and behaviors,” said RBH co-founder Yamicia Connor, MD, PhD. “This Hackathon represents a step forward in achieving this ambitious goal, and I am excited to see this vision come to life.”

Participants from any background and experience level are welcomed to learn more and apply at this link. A passion for health equity and social justice is encouraged!