COVID-19 Policy Hackathon – Center for Health Decision Science

CHDS faculty Eve Wittenberg mentored students from across the globe in a “policy hackathon” devoted to developing policy proposals across the spectrum of COVID-related challenges. While most hackathons focus on technological solutions, this hackathon focused on policy across four tracks: public health, firms and workers, trade and immigration, and financial policy. Wittenberg served as a speaker, mentor, and judge in a 36-hour marathon of webinars, “office hours,” and creative thinking by over 800 participants from 78 countries. The Stanford Economics Association organized the event in collaboration with economics students from MIT. Winning proposals included strategies to reopen Brazilian public schools and methods to address sanitation disparities in the Navajo Nation in the US. “It was an exhilarating and exhausting weekend filled with “speed-mentoring” sessions with students as far away as Singapore and as close to home as Boston,” Wittenberg said.

Learn more: Read about the COVID-19 Policy Hackathon.