In this academic paper, the Appalachian region of Eastern Kentucky, which has been disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis, was used as the context for a healthcare hackathon, run by MIT Hacking Medicine, to create grassroots healthcare innovation ideas through a systematic design thinking process, yielding numerous novel strategies, such as mobile applications and community health programs.
Using grassroots entrepreneurship, the hackathon democratized the process of innovation by shifting the resources and onus of resolving the public challenge from the institutional level to the average citizen. Citizens were selected through an application process among Eastern Kentucky residents that had been impacted first-hand by the opioid crisis.
Srinivasan, S., Ramadi, K. B., Ippolito, A., & Atun, R. (2019). Democratizing innovation through grass-roots entrepreneurship: lessons from efforts to address the opioid epidemic in the United States. BMJ global health, 4(6), e002079.