Crowdsourcing designathon: a new model for multisectoral collaboration

Public health programmes are frequently developed by experts with limited feedback from communities.1 Crowdsourcing, allowing a group to solve a problem and then sharing the solution with the public, may help to improve public health programmes. Crowdsourcing can often take the form of participatory contests.2 Previous crowdsourcing contests have focused on producing individual components of communication programmes, such as videos,3 4 images5 6 or logos.7 However, crowdsourcing contests have not focused on designing the final programme and plan for implementation. The purpose of this project was to crowdsource the development of an HIV testing programme using a designathon. The concept of a crowdsourcing designathon is related to, but distinct from, a hackathon. Hackathons are intensive, approximately 72-hour contests that bring together young people to complete a task.8 9 For example, hackathons organised by a university have brought together students and others interested in technology to create a mobile application.10 Medical hackathons have challenged participants to create devices that help people with dementia, disability and other illnesses.9 11 12 We propose the concept of a crowdsourcing designathon, drawing on the principles of crowdsourcing in order to design a public health programme with strong community input. The purpose of this article is to describe a crowdsourcing designathon, summarise designathon outputs and discuss designathon implications for public health. The purpose of our crowdsourcing designathon was to develop a community-based HIV testing programme to be implemented in eight Chinese cities. This concept was influenced by theories of crowdsourcing13 and community-based participatory research.14 Our designathon was implemented in the following steps: forming a local steering committee; open call for participants; prepare for the event; 72-hour implementation; sustaining engagement and evaluation (table 1). View this table: Table 1 Stages of a designathon Our SESH (Social Entrepreneurship to Spur Health) group …