Innovate4Health 2022

Innovate4Health is an online collaborative design sprint looking for innovative and creative solutions that will help address the issues of emerging infectious disease threats. After identifying a specific problem and a proposed innovation solution, student teams will be selected to join the cohort of this year’s Innovate4Health design sprint. Students will have the opportunity to work with the ReAct Strategic Policy Program and other expert coaches to design innovations that will take on the intersectoral challenge of emerging infectious diseases, from COVID-19 to antimicrobial resistance.

Taking a systems approach, Innovate4Health emphasizes social innovations that consider the needs of resource-limited settings. Innovate4Health seeks projects that have strategic potential to innovate the space of addressing emerging infectious diseases. At the application stage, they may not be fully formed or piloted. However, the central idea should be highly promising, and the team, open to evolving further the potential of this idea. Proposed projects or interventions should have a theory of change, a target population, an innovative approach, and the potential for scale-up or replication.

Innovate4Health is also about investing in change agents, the future leaders behind these transformative ideas. We are looking for student teams (2-5 students per team) to join us in this global design sprint. 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. The design sprint process is intended to help teams develop further their ideas from the application stage. Selected teams will work with a team of experts to co-construct their solutions through asynchronous and synchronous learning.

We invite applications from teams that would be excited to collaborate with other highly talented students teams. Teams will be notified of their selection in early October, and the design sprint will extend over four months. Selected teams will be encouraged to prepare a poster presentation for the Global Youth AMR Summit during World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (November 18-24, 2022). Learn more here, sign up for updates here, and apply for this year’s Innovate4Health here!

Applications are due September 19, 2022. Sign up for our newsletter here to learn more about Innovate4Health and explore resources that will help you design an innovative solution.