Abstract
BackgroundInnovation contests call on non-experts to help solve problems. While these contests have been used extensively in the private sector to increase engagement between organizations and clients, there is little data on the role of innovation contests to promote health campaigns. We implemented an innovation contest in China to increase sexual health awareness among youth and evaluated community engagement in the contest.MethodsThe sexual health image contest consisted of an open call for sexual health images, contest promotion activities, judging of entries, and celebrating contributions. Contest promotion activities included in-person and social media feedback, classroom didactics, and community-driven activities. We conducted 19 semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample to ensure a range of participant scores, experts and non-expert participants, submitters and non-submitters. Transcripts of each interview were coded with Atlas.ti and evaluated by three reviewers.ResultsWe identified stages of community engagement in the contest which contributed to public health impact. Community engagement progressed across a continuum from passive, moderate, active, and finally strong engagement. Engagement was a dynamic process that appeared to have little relationship with formally submitting an image to the contest. Among non-expert participants, contest engagement increased knowledge, healthy attitudes, and empowered participants to share ideas about safe sex with others outside of the contest. Among experts who helped organize the contest, the process of implementing the contest fostered multi-sectoral collaboration and re-oriented public health leadership towards more patient-centered public health campaigns.ConclusionThe results of this study suggest that innovation contests may be a useful tool for public health promotion by enhancing community engagement and re-orienting health campaigns to make them more patient-centered.
Highlights
Innovation contests call on non-experts to help solve problems
A wide range of community engagement was observed in the innovation contest and this engagement empowered participants to talk about sexual health
Our research extends the literature by examining the process of organizing an innovation contest, differentiating stages of contest engagement, and examining how contest engagement may influence behaviors
Summary
Innovation contests call on non-experts to help solve problems. While these contests have been used extensively in the private sector to increase engagement between organizations and clients, there is little data on the role of innovation contests to promote health campaigns. We implemented an innovation contest in China to increase sexual health awareness among youth and evaluated community engagement in the contest. Innovation contests can engage large groups of people in health-related activities [1]. Innovation contests are a form of crowdsourcing that call on non-experts to solve problems, often enabled by multi-sectoral input from the community. While most contest evaluations have focused on contest outputs, innovation contests may promote community engagement. We define community engagement as the relationships and communication between local community members and health authorities
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