By Kirstin Q. Siemering, DrPH
The internet is an incredible vehicle for helping us get things done, by putting information, people, and goods right at our fingertips. However, the public and nonprofit sectors have been comparatively slow to embrace the medium’s potential for innovation.
But not anymore.
We have entered the era of gov2.0 and there’s no looking back.
Crowdsourcing is just one of a number of internet-based strategies that nonprofits are employing to raise awareness, generate potential solutions to challenging problems and questions, and conserve resources.
In collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and UWPHI, San Francisco’s Health 2.0 just released a crowdsourcing challenge called The Health Factor: Using the County Health Rankings to Make Smart Decisions. The goal of this challenge is to bring the County Health Rankings to the places where people go to get information to inform their decisions about where to live, where to locate a business or invest, or where to target services and philanthropic support. To be considered for the $2,500 prize, ideas must be submitted by September 15, 2010.
This competition follows on the heels of the County Health Rankings Community Health Action Forum. The forum was initiated by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to gather ideas for how communities can improve health outcomes. The 110 ideas submitted by the August 6th deadline are currently under review.
Minnesota Idea Open is also a frontrunner in crowdsourcing among nonprofits, recently hosting its first $15,000 challenge to address obesity. The Saint Paul Foundation will soon be using the site to sponsor a “micro-challenge” that puts a “fresh face” on its traditional grantmaking process.
But crowdsourcing is just one approach that nonprofits are employing. In other Web 2.0 arenas, a quickly growing number of sites, apps, widgets, and other virtual gadgets are creating opportunities interactive, web-based population health improvement, such as:
- Salt Lake Valley (Utah) Health Department’s “One Small Change” campaign (using Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr)
- Pacific Disaster Center’s Disaster Alert (for iPhone and iPad)
- CityLife (a mobile app to be released for local government)
- Assetmap (coming soon to help groups “inventory, visualize, and leverage” their social capital)
Please help spread the word about the Health 2.0 competition and tell us your ideas about other ways to use the web to promote population health. Leave your comments below or feel free to just send us an email. Thanks in advance for joining the conversation!
Kirstin Siemering, DrPH is a researcher with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
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