Public Health Hackathon: empowering high school students as tomorrow's leaders and innovators in public health

Preparing the next generation of public health leaders requires innovative educational strategies that foster creativity, collaboration, and practical problem-solving skills. Hackathons-short, intensive innovation challenges-provide a structured platform for students to co-create solutions to real-world problems. The University of Memphis School of Public Health launched the "RE-AIM Public Health IDEAS through the Lens of Youth Hackathon" series to empower high school, undergraduate, and graduate students to engage in public health innovation using design thinking and a human-centered approach. The Public Health Hackathon applies the SMAART model combined with principles of human-centered design and design thinking to guide participants through ideation, prototyping, and solution development. The 3rd annual hackathon, held in 2024-2025, involved 87 participants from 9 institutions across four countries (United States, India, Malta, and Uganda). Through workshops, mentorship, and structured innovation sessions, students developed public health campaigns and prototypes addressing locally and globally relevant challenges. Participants demonstrated increased awareness of public health careers, improved communication and teamwork skills, and enhanced understanding of health promotion and community engagement strategies. The program was implemented as an extended design-competition format with optional virtual workshops (problem identification and research; ideation and storyboarding; prototyping and implementation planning; pitching and communication), centralized technical assistance, and rubric-based evaluation of abstracts and pitches by an interdisciplinary panel of experts. Student teams developed diverse public health project concepts, including campaigns and prototypes, addressing locally and globally relevant health challenges. This manuscript describes the Hackathon's design, implementation, and evaluation approach and highlights its potential as a pragmatic model for early public health workforce exposure and youth-led community health innovation. The RE-AIM Public Health IDEAS Hackathon model effectively bridges public health education and workforce development by empowering future leaders as agents of change and innovation within their communities.