No, the only eligibility requirement is being a current student at UC Berkeley. This includes undergraduates, graduate students, and doctoral students from any school or program.
Yes! Students located outside the Bay Area are encouraged to register. Please note that teams selected for the final pitch event will ideally have at least one member physically present for the pitch, so we encourage you to consider this when forming teams.
Yes, the BPH Social Impact team will connect participants looking for team members. This includes participants registering by themselves or partial teams wanting to add more members. We will facilitate these connections after registration closes on January 31.
Yes! No prior experience with these topics is necessary. The planning team will share background information about rural health policy as well as best practices for policy development. You can get started by going through the Resources tab on this website, which will be available in early December.
We understand students have other commitments and won’t be able to spend their entire weekends on the hackathon. We encourage you to coordinate with your team members to decide how you will break up the work and set internal deadlines for your proposal.
The final deliverable will be policy recommendations in deck form (max 10 slides) responding to one or more of the policy prompts shared on March 13th at the kickoff. The slides should include:
Description and significance of the problem or opportunity you are focusing on
Proposed policy solution (including evidence to support it and expected outcomes)
Implementation
Strategy for testing and piloting
Approach to implementation
Anticipated issues and how to address them
Costs to build and maintain this solution for the first year
Policy pathway
Will this require new funding, new legislation, regulatory changes?
If so, how will you pursue them?
No. We won't release the specific policy prompts until the Hackathon kickoff on March 13. This means that research, ideation, and proposal development will all occur within the 3-day hackathon period (March 13-15). To prepare for the Hackathon, teams can review materials on the Resources page of this website (available in early December), participate in expert panels we will host in February, and review state applications for the Rural Health Transformation Program.
The Hackathon policy prompts will align with one or more of the focus areas of the Rural Health Transformation program:
Make rural America healthy again: Support rural health innovations and new strategies to promote health and address root causes of diseases.
Sustainable access: Help rural providers become long-term access points for care by improving efficiency and sustainability.
Workforce development: Attract and retain a highly skilled health care workforce by strengthening recruitment and retention of health care providers in rural communities.
Innovative care: Spark the growth of innovative care models to improve health outcomes, coordinate care, and promote flexible care arrangements.
Tech innovation: Foster use of innovative technologies that promote efficient care delivery and access to digital health tools by rural facilities, providers, and patients.
No. Due to time constraints, we will select a limited number of finalists to present their proposals at the pitch event on March 16. Teams will send their proposals to the Policy Hackathon planning team the afternoon of March 15 and will be notified if they are moving forward later that evening.
You can contact Grace Brown, Social Impact Associate, at grace_brown@berkeley.edu with any additional questions.