Table 4_Public Health Hackathon: empowering high school students as tomorrow’s leaders and innovators in public health.docx

Preparing the next generation of public health leaders requires innovative educational strategies that foster creativity, collaboration, and practical problem-solving skills. Hackathons—short, intensive innovation challenges—provide a structured platform for students to co-create solutions to real-world problems. The University of Memphis School of Public Health launched the “RE-AIM Public Health IDEAS through the Lens of Youth Hackathon” series to empower high school, undergraduate, and graduate students to engage in public health innovation using design thinking and a human-centered approach. The Public Health Hackathon applies the SMAART model combined with principles of human-centered design and design thinking to guide participants through ideation, prototyping, and solution development. The 3rd annual hackathon, held in 2024–2025, involved 87 participants from 9 institutions across four countries (United States, India, Malta, and Uganda). Through workshops, mentorship, and structured innovation sessions, students developed public health campaigns and prototypes addressing locally and globally relevant challenges. Participants demonstrated increased awareness of public health careers, improved communication and teamwork skills, and enhanced understanding of health promotion and community engagement strategies. The program was implemented as an extended design-competition format with optional virtual workshops (problem identification and research; ideation and storyboarding; prototyping and implementation planning; pitching and communication), centralized technical assistance, and rubric-based evaluation of abstracts and pitches by an interdisciplinary panel of experts. Student teams developed diverse public health project concepts, including campaigns and prototypes, addressing locally and globally relevant health challenges. This manuscript describes the Hackathon’s design, implementation, and evaluation approach and highlights its potential as a pragmatic model for early public health workforce exposure and youth-led community health innovation. The RE-AIM Public Health IDEAS Hackathon model effectively bridges public health education and workforce development by empowering future leaders as agents of change and innovation within their communities.

培养下一代公共卫生领军人才，亟需能够激发创造力、协作能力与实操问题解决能力的创新教育模式。黑客松（Hackathon）——即短期高强度创新挑战赛——为学生搭建了结构化平台，使其能够协同共创真实世界问题的解决方案。孟菲斯大学公共卫生学院发起了「基于青年视角的RE-AIM公共卫生理念黑客松（RE-AIM Public Health IDEAS through the Lens of Youth Hackathon）」系列赛事，旨在赋能高中生、本科生与研究生，使其借助设计思维与人本化方法参与公共卫生创新实践。本次公共卫生黑客松结合SMAART模型与人本设计、设计思维的核心原则，引导参与者完成创意构思、原型开发与方案落地全流程。2024至2025年举办的第三届年度黑客松赛事，共有来自4个国家（美国、印度、马耳他、乌干达）的9所院校的87名参与者参与。通过工作坊、导师指导与结构化创新环节，学生们开发出针对本地与全球公共卫生议题的健康宣传活动与原型方案。参与者均表现出对公共卫生职业的认知提升，沟通与团队协作能力得到强化，同时对健康促进与社区参与策略的理解更为深入。本次赛事采用拓展型设计竞赛形式，配套可选的线上工作坊（涵盖问题识别与研究、创意构思与故事板绘制、原型开发与落地规划、路演与沟通技巧四大模块）、集中化技术支持，以及由跨学科专家小组依据评分标准对摘要与路演材料进行的评估。学生团队开发出多样化的公共卫生项目方案，涵盖针对本地与全球健康议题的宣传活动与原型作品。本文阐述了本次黑客松赛事的设计、实施与评估方法，并凸显其作为早期公共卫生从业者培养、青年主导社区健康创新务实模式的潜力。「基于青年视角的RE-AIM公共卫生理念黑客松」模式通过赋能未来公共卫生领军者成为社区内变革与创新的推动者，有效打通了公共卫生教育与人才培养之间的壁垒。