4th March to 15th April 2020, online challenge.

The World Health Organization (WHO), supported by the UN Office of

Information and Communications Technology (UN-OICT) and UNAIDS challenge you to use your bright minds and entrepreneurial skills to address one of the urgent health challenges for the next decade : Keeping young people safe. 

The range of possible health innovation solutions that may be submitted include:

• apps or games
• wearables, digital technologies, tools or platforms, products
• the creation or improvement of products, services, processes
• new approaches to collaboration or communication, or new ways of engaging young people and/or other stakeholders
• policy reform proposals

with a view to keeping young people safe across the world.

Health innovations are defined here as the creation or improvement of virtual, physical or digital products, services, processes, or systems to improve public health.

Think about the potential for innovations to flow across the world. Perhaps an innovation in a low-income country can have an impact in a high-income country. Learning has no boundaries.

Who can participate?

Individuals and groups of up to four (4) individuals are invited to respond to the challenge by submitting a proposed solution to the challenge. There are no age restrictions. Only one (1) submission is allowed per individual or group of individuals. Submissions must be made in your own personal capacity, and not as representative of an organization.

What’s in it for you?

All submissions will be featured on the challenge webpage on the Unite Ideas platform.

The winners and their proposals will be mentioned on the WHO public website and invited to attend an award ceremony at WHO’s Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland in June 2020 (date and other details TBC). Flights and accommodation will be covered by WHO, in accordance with its rules and procedures, for up to three winners (one individual representative of each winning proposal).

What do I need to submit?

Your submission to this challenge may happen between 4 March 2020 at 10 am and 15 April 2020 at 11:59 PM (all times are New York, USA time), and must include:

• A one-page short description of your idea, solutions or tool (max 400 words)
• A video of yourself/yourselves explaining the solution (max 2 minutes)
• An online working solution or prototype of your tool (preferred), or a video of it in action (max 2 minutes).
• Source code of the solution (This refers to the computer programmes, data files, and other electronic files to make your tool or solution work. These files should be hosted in a publicly accessible repository on the Internet (e.g. GitHub, bitbucket or similar)). Only original, open source work is accepted; however, your solution may also make use of other existing open source libraries.
• (OPTIONAL) If your submission is a policy reform proposal, you may submit an additional document. However, the one-page short description (point 1 above) must contain all the key aspects of your proposal.

Whatever your solution, it needs to be your original work.

Submissions are allowed in any of the six official UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish).