Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Request for Proposals: Health Disparities Codeathon

Proposals due April 26

The National Institutes of Health Office of Data Science Strategy, in partnership with the Howard University Research Centers for Minority Institutions Program, is pleased to announce a virtual codeathon focused on health disparities on June 21-24, 2021. Applications are due April 26.

This codeathon will focus on building tools, pipelines, and other analysis and visualization techniques on topics relating to health disparities, such as metabolic syndrome, maternal morbidity, or COVID-19 disparities. We are interested in proposals for pipelines and analysis of large-scale public health datasets, data interoperability, and using machine learning techniques. We also welcome proposals for tutorial pipelines and educational tools.

Please submit your proposals here.

• Examples of previous codeathon projects can be found here.
• Examples of datasets:
  • ICPSR: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
  • nuMoM2b: Nulliparous Pregnancy Outcomes Study: Monitoring Mothers-to-be
  • HDPulse
  • National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Reports and Data Resources
  • COVID-19 socioeconomic and health disparities
  • The COVID Racial Data Tracker
  • National Cancer Institute (NCI) Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER) Data & Software
  • Compendium of Federal Datasets Addressing Health Disparities (PDF)
  • UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository
• If you have an applicable dataset, please send us an email with a link and description of the dataset.

FAQ

If I pitch a project, do I need to lead it?

You can choose to lead your project team, recommend someone, or we can try to find a suitable team lead. Providing a designated team lead dramatically increases the probability that we will select the project for the codeathon.

Do I need to assemble a team?

No. We will create working groups of 5-6 individuals who have various backgrounds and relevant expertise to work on each project. Each team will also have mentors with technical expertise and working knowledge of historically underserved and disadvantaged communities.

What are my responsibilities as a team lead?

The team leader will coordinate a group of 5-6 people in defining the project and producing clear vision for developing a solution. To accomplish this goal, the team lead must define and delegate tasks, incorporate team members’ ideas to accomplish the goal, and ensure the team’s success. All participants in the codeathon, including team leads, will need to be present for all three days of the codeathon.

What will we build?

We will make all pipelines, scripts, software, and programs generated in this codeathon available on a dedicated, public GitHub repository. Teams may submit manuscripts describing the design and use of software tools and/or analysis and visualizations they created to an appropriate journal. You will have access to computational resources in the cloud to turn your idea into a working prototype.

What if I only want to participate?

Applications for those who would like to participate in the codeathon will be available in May.

Legal Information

Participants retain ownership of all intellectual property rights (including moral rights) to the code submitted to and developed in the codeathon. Participants agree to publish the code and any related data on GitHub.

Email us if you have questions or need additional information.