Solving rural health’s thorniest problems
Public Health’s Rural Health Hackathon let UC Berkeley students pitch practical health solutions
- 4 min. read ▪ Published
One beautiful weekend in March when temperatures in the Bay Area rose up to 80 degrees, 140 UC Berkeley students from across the fields of public health, policy, engineering, business, data science, and social welfare, chose not to spend their time off from classes enjoying the natural beauty that the city of Berkeley and its environs has to offer.
Instead, a passion for problem-solving and equity in health care had these ambitious students spending 48 hours straight working on proposals to solve rural health’s thorniest problems.
UC Berkeley Public Health Impact Fellow Nikita Singareddy—who is CEO of Fortuna Health—came up with the idea of a “Rural Health Hackathon” and was delighted by the response from students.
“From Friday night to Monday morning, 140 undergraduate and graduate students developed hackathon ideas, collaborated with mentors, and produced proposals tackling some of the biggest challenges in rural health,” Singareddy said. “You could feel the energy and enthusiasm. Students committed their whole weekend—midterms and all—because Berkeley students are changemakers. Every group proposal and the final 6 pitches proved it!”
The Hackathon, produced by the Social Impact team at UC Berkeley School of Public Health and sponsored by Manatt, Centene, and Fortuna Health, asked students for proposals based on five prompts: closing the birthing desert; reinventing the rural hospital in the age of AI; paying for community health; expanding behavioral health care access; and scaling prevention. It builds upon the work on the Rural Health Innovation Program, which gives mid-career public health professionals working in rural areas the chance to pursue a masters in public health.
“When you look at the headlines, there are a lot of challenges in rural areas: Lack of local providers, higher rates of chronic disease, lack of access to fresh food,” said School of Public Health Chief Impact Officer Claudia Williams. “But the invitation we had to the students was how do we build from the strengths, from the resilience and from the assets that exist in rural areas?”
After a weekend of working on proposals with the aid of 15 mentors from industry and government, six of the initial 40 teams went on to the finals, judged by Sarita Mohanty of the SCAN Foundation, Michael Valle of the California Department of Health Care Access and Information, and Suzanne Rivera of McKinsey.
“Participating in the rural health hackathon was a rare opportunity to move beyond discussing healthcare challenges to actually building solutions in real time,” said MPH student Swapnika Tantravahi. “It was uniquely energizing to translate our coursework and lived experiences into a real, actionable solution under that kind of creative pressure.”
In the end, two of the three winning teams chose to focus on maternal health outcomes, while one looked at using AI in rural health care settings.
The top prize winners—Ishika Sachdeva, who’s pursuing a PhD in Health Policy; Anya Fang, Medha Lohani, and Tantravahi, all pursuing their MPH degrees; and public health undergrad Shrida Pandey, who just received a the Chancellor’s Birgeneau Recognition Award for Service to Underrepresented Students—presented “The Bridge Model,” a three-pillar proposal to improve maternal health by creating community health access points, digitizing health care delivery, and strengthening the maternal health workforce by placing residents in rural areas.
“The rural health hackathon was meaningful to me because it brought together students who care deeply about health equity and gave us the chance to think creatively about challenges facing rural communities,” said Pandey. “It felt like a reminder that students have a real role to play in shaping thoughtful, community-responsive ideas for change.”
The winning team won a $3,000 cash prize.
In second place, winning $2,000, Uniqsha Batool, who is pursuing a master of development practice, presented a rural network that brings health service to patients via integrated network of AI wearables and remote physicians. And in third, winning $1,000, was First to Fourth, a maternal health care proposal that looked to solve rural birthing deserts by shifting away from hospital care to midwives. The team was composed of four undergraduate students, Andie Yi, political economy; Bianca Chiu, public health and sociology; and Eesha Garimella and Sophia Cheng, both public health.
“Berkeley is a training ground and launch pad for innovators and entrepreneurs of every type” said Williams. “ It was thrilling to see the creativity and out-of-the-box thinking our students brought to the pressing challenge of improving health in rural America. Innovating for the public good is what we do best.”
