About Innovate4Health

Innovate4Health aims to inspire innovators for the future to tackle the urgent challenges and health inequities of emerging infections, including Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and COVID-19.

Innovate4Health is a design sprint that focuses on empowering students from health and other disciplines at university and graduate school levels to take initiative in solving these problems in healthcare settings and communities. Innovate4Health differs from traditional design sprints through its focus on co-constructing innovations. We are not searching for a “magic bullet” to solve emerging infections. Instead, we want to identify real-life local projects that would have the potential to make a positive and scalable impact on communities and develop implementable solutions and advocacy approaches. Ultimately, we want to be the bridge connecting these projects to the global health community and work with students to build more impactful and sustainable solutions for these health inequities in low-resource settings.

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. At the application stage, the project or proposed intervention need not have been piloted, but the core idea must have potential and promise.The design sprint process is intended to help teams develop further their ideas from the application stage. Student teams selected to join the cohort of this year’s Innovate4Health design sprint will have the opportunity to develop their idea.

Taking a systems approach, Innovate4Health emphasizes social innovations that consider the needs of resource-limited settings. Along these lines, proposed projects should explain:

1. Theory of change. What transformative change will result from the project or proposed intervention? What key challenge in a resource-limited setting does this project address? And why is this change important or catalytic? If A happens, then why would B result? 

2. Target population. Who is the specific target for change? How might targeting this innovation improve health equity

3. Innovation. What is novel or potentially transformative about the project or proposed intervention? In what ways does it build upon what has been done before, but advance or rethink how things are done today?

4. Potential for scale-up or replication. How might this become more than an idea on a page? What role might you play in implementing the change and/or advocating for another key actor to do so? With whom would your team envision scaling up or replicating this approach?

Projects might target challenges in the healthcare delivery system, from hospital to clinic; in the community where there are challenges of water, sanitation and hygiene; or in the food production system, from farm to wet market.

The global student design sprint seeks to engage collaborative teams of students that are eager to work together, across disciplines, and with a larger cohort of innovators. Teams must be comprised of 2-5 students. We encourage diversity within and across teams in the design sprint. Through the design sprint, teams will work through ideation, implementation, and advocacy strategies to support the adoption of these approaches. Innovate4Health will provide both asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities to help teams evolve their ideas.

We invite applications from teams that would be excited to collaborate with other highly talented students teams. Beginning in early October, the design sprint will extend over four months. We encourage teams to participate in the Global Youth AMR Summit that will take place during World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (November 18-24, 2022).

In the last Innovate4Health Global Design Sprint, we challenged students to propose and develop social innovations targeting one of the three innovation pillars below. This year, we have broadened the scope to have students think through four key design elements, though we encourage you to look through these resources to develop a better understanding of some of the issues you might choose to address. These design elements correspond very closely to the elements of the proposal application which can be found below and here.

Innovate4Health is organized with the support of the following organizations: