Orange Sparkle Ball in collaboration with Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University hosted the second event in their Public Health + Webinar series about the intersection of public health and other disciplines. This installment was particularly exciting for us here at Orange Sparkle Ball as it touched on the intersection of Public Health, Innovation, and Open Source Data.
We had the opportunity to learn from Lorena Molina-Irizarry, Director of Operations at the Census Open Innovation Labs (COIL) within the U.S. Census Bureau. Lorena's work at COIL is guided by “understanding how co-designing and creating with others... helps in pushing innovation forward.”
As the leader of The Opportunity Project, Lorena works to create a culture of Open Innovation influenced by key pillars such as citizen science, open data collaboration, and idea generation.
Within The Opportunity Project, Lorena and her team facilitate a sprint process that brings various sectors together to solve some of the nation's toughest challenges. The beauty of this project lies in the emphasis on cross-sector collaboration.
In Lorena’s words, “all stakeholders, regardless of the industry, regardless if you’re coming from a start-up, or if you’re a student in a University, or you’re an entrepreneur, big tech or big corporations, government, or community organizations... the one thing that brings us together is that everybody is trying to solve the same problems.”
The Opportunity Project aims to “solve some of the biggest challenges we face as a nation by” breaking those silos and facilitating collaboration.
Last year, The Opportunity Project focused on a problem space surrounding a prominent public health issue, the opioid crisis. One successful innovation that arose from this sprint process is a predictive analytics tool that was developed to identify the likelihood of where and when opioid emergencies would occur. By integrating Census and New York incident data, the tool allows first responders in New York to identify geographical areas where opioid emergency incidents might take place.
Prompted by demos of incredible tools such as this one, Lorena’s discussion left us with a desire to further explore some of the open source data sets that The Opportunity Project has curated.
Interested? Learn more about how to sign up for a sprint and the upcoming demo week here:
To view previous and upcoming installments in the Public Health + Series click here.
Written by Liris Stephanie Berra, Public Health Innovation Analyst
Liris is a Master of Public Health student at Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. She is part of the Global Health department, pursuing a concentration in Community Health Development and a certificate in the Social Determinants of Health.
