Innovate4Health 2022: Call for student team applications!

2022-08-19

Student?  Take the opportunity to join the front lines to act on antimicrobial resistance and COVID-19 in the Innovate4Health competition. This year, student teams are encouraged to innovate around three pillars: prevention and treatment, reduce use of antimicrobials in food systems and resilient community health systems. Deadline is 19 September.

In focus: Social innovation in low resource settings

Taking a systems approach, Innovate4Health emphasizes social innovations that consider the needs of resource-limited settings. We are looking for student teams (2-5 students per team) with ideas for innovative solutions and an interest in continuing to develop and refine their ideas in a design sprint curriculum.

Through the design sprint, teams will work through:

• ideation
• implementation
• advocacy strategies

to support the adoption of these approaches.

The design sprint activities are developed from year to year – to strengthen the value for participating teams. This year’s cohort will have the opportunity to:

• develop stage-specific strategies
• write a blog advancing the social mission behind the team’s innovation
• prepare a poster presentation of their project
• put together a social media advocacy piece

Innovate around 3 pillars

This year, student teams are encouraged to innovate around one of three pillars:

1. Ensuring effective prevention and treatment of emerging infectious diseases in the healthcare delivery system
2. Reducing the use and the need to use antimicrobials in food systems
3. Making community health systems more resilient to emerging infectious diseases

Coached by experts

A group of experts will coach the team on its final presentation, which will be shared as a recording. The selected teams will work with a team of experts and coaches to co-construct their solutions through both recorded and live learning sessions. We invite applications from teams that would be excited to collaborate with other highly talented student teams.

Looking for innovative student teams with a vision

Students do not need any previous experience involving antimicrobial resistance or other emerging infectious diseases. In the competitive application process, we are looking for student teams providing a vision for what they might want to innovate, including the specific problem and context, as well as sharing how they might be positioned to help implement such a project.

Application: not fully developed projects

At the application stage, however, we do not expect fully developed projects. The design sprint process is intended to help teams develop further their ideas from the application stage.

More information

You can find additional information on the Innovate4Health website.

There you can find:

• more background information on Innovate4Health
• the design sprint timeline
• terms and conditions
• submission guidelines

Last year, over 70 student teams answered our call for Innovate4AMR applications, and only 15 finalist teams were selected.

Deadline team applications: Monday, September 19, 2022.

Sign up for updates: We will be releasing additional resources to support teams in developing applications, and interested students can sign up for updates.