Leveraging Insights from an Interprofessional Community Hackathon to Address Real Challenges at a Student-Run Free Clinic
Background: C.D. Doyle Clinic (CDD) is a student-run free clinic (SRFC) that provides acute, episodic care at the Esperanza Community, a 200-member emergency shelter complex serving those experiencing homelessness. The Foundations for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (FICP) course teaches interprofessional education to medical, pharmacy, nursing, and social work students. A hackathon is a time-bound event where teams collectively prototype solutions for diverse problems. CDD’s Community Hackathon took place in an FICP class with prompts reflecting CDD’s challenges. Our research aims to characterize ideas from a rapid-cycle, interactive Community Hackathon that leveraged resources and knowledge in interprofessional teams to highlight solutions for implementation at a SRFC.
Methods: The Hackathon engaged 227 interprofessional participants across 36 teams. Participants were provided with pre-session information detailing clinic scope and services. The Hackathon consisted of two 20-minute rounds: 1) increase the volume of clients served by the clinic and 2) promote a stable health home to better support clients’ long-term health needs. CDD judges provided real-time feedback to each team following both rounds. An end-of-session evaluation was administered to participants to evaluate perceptions on collaboration, learning environment, and overall experience. A preliminary review of proposals was conducted by 6 independent reviewers, each analyzing the five teams for number of ideas generated, themes, feasibility, impact, and novelty. A secondary review was completed by 2 independent reviewers to reconcile discrepancies and identify discrete ideas.
Results: A total of 187 and 183 ideas were generated across Rounds 1 and 2, respectively; the average number of ideas generated per team was 5.2 and 5.0. 12 distinct themes were identified, the most common including Clinic Expansion (16.2%), Community Partnerships (15.4%), and Outreach (12.2%). 32.4% of the ideas were Novel, 38.3% Done by CDD, 18.5% Done by other Community Partners, and 10.8% Done by TOOF. Participants rated their session experience as Excellent (55%), Very Good (25%), Good (14%), and Fair/Poor (5%).
Conclusion: The Community Hackathon generated a range of creative, value-aligned solutions to real-life, structural limitations endured by a SRFC. Added benefits of the Hackathon structure included encouraging collaboration amongst interprofessional students and raising awareness about Austin’s community health landscape.
Reflections/Implications: While administering the session, challenges included time constraints, varying experiences with CDD, and differing interpretations of proposal parameters. Ideas for future iterations include pre-session clinic visits and structured proposal parameters, such as the S.M.A.R.T. criteria.
