Inspiration
The problem that our team discovered in our everyday lives is that there are too many health-related platforms and apps, which often do not feel as inclusive because the nature of the questions (gender, race, weight) could often feel triggering and unnecessary. Additionally, the current market offers a huge variety of apps each tailored for one specific need, yet no centralized program for all of our needs. We wanted to create a much more comprehensive and inclusive site, and thus we created CommuniCares.
"Care for you, care for all" embodies CommuniCare's values: care, community, and communication. Caring for yourself allows for you to care for your community. Our resources page suggests meaningful charities for users to give back to their own community. This slogan also encompasses our aim for the site to be inclusive for all people. Especially in COVID times, individualized care is hard to receive and often extremely expensive. CommuniCares emphasizes the need for preventative measures such as taking care of health on a day to day basis.
What it does
CommuniCares offers users a unique way to receive health recommendations on their browser and as text recommendations. Users enter some demographic information (name, age and height, phone number), choose the most important health focus for them, and are given the option to select from a number of symptoms. Depending on the answers, CommuniCares will give them a recommended water intake and recommended hours of sleep. If users select concerning symptoms, CommuniCares will suggest they visit a healthcare professional.
Additionally, a thorough list of resources is provided on the site which includes mental and physical health resources, COVID information, and a thorough list of charities. Users who find the service useful are encouraged to consider donating to help support community health.
How we built it
We utilized HTML, CSS, and python's Flask to build out our website's frontend and backend. After learning about Bandwidth's messaging API, we integrated it into our project to incorporate communication between the resource and the user.
Challenges we ran into
It was challenging to integrate Bandwidth’s API into our website to communicate with users via text. Using a variety of programming languages on the same project as a group was also a bit difficult to navigate. Additionally, as it was our first hackathon for many of us, it was challenging to define a project scope that was suitable for only 24 hours of time. We would’ve liked to add more features, but we didn’t end up with enough time for them.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of all of our work this weekend. Our team worked really well together and it was exciting to see how we combined our different backgrounds and knowledge to create project that we are proud of and that we believe has the potential for positive change. The majority of our team had never used html, Flask, or APIs before so this project was a great way to push us into discovering more about these topics.
What we learned
Through this project, we learned how to use Bandwidth APIs, which helped us use text notifications. We also used Flask. This was the first hackathon for the majority of our team as well, so the whole experience of creating a project from scratch was very new and exciting.
What's next for CommuniCares
There is much to expand on in the future. Consistent with our original goal, we want CommuniCares to eliminate the need for having multiple different health apps. We want to provide the option for users to opt in to different health trackers and services like period and mood trackers, as well as timed text notifications. Since we want to evolve with the time and provide the most relevant information, the site would also change based on the most recent US health guidelines. We also believe the site could be more inclusive and reach more people with more time.
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