Health Hackathon 2024

Dozens of year 10 students from across several high schools in Western Sydney have developed social marketing campaigns after attending a two day intensive Hackathon event hosted by NSW Health and Regional Industry Education Partnerships (RIEP) Program, NSW Department of Education.
Experts in social marketing, communication, public health and gamification shared insights on how to develop a health campaign. Students used this guidance to identify a health issue that was important to them. For example, identifying and supporting access to care for mental illness, the physical risks of cosmetics, visual and auditory damage from electronic device overuse, navigating online bullying, and vaping. Each participant then took part in developing and presenting a pitch to create a social marketing campaign to address their chosen topic.
This is the second time the event has been hosted to give students the tools to address and prevent health issues that are relevant to their peer group, gain insight to fundamentals for project management, stakeholder identification and marketing, and understand the wide variety of professions employed by NSW Health to address the increasingly complex health needs of the local community.
Planning is already underway for the next event. Please let us know if you would like to be involved!