In April 2020 it became clear that greatly increased testing was needed to control the spread of the Coronavirus. Under this reality, which brought to the surface strong racial and income disparities in healthcare, our incubator focused on answering the following question: How can we develop a testing solution that is quick and cost-effective to implement, and bring it directly to underserved, high-risk communities? Our starting point was the re-purposing of underutilized school buses into mobile labs, a concept which proved to be equitable and flexible.
One thing was clear for our team: we wanted to quickly implement our idea. However, this process wasn’t as linear as we thought and we came across barriers related to resources and politics, challenges outside of our control.
But to every story there is also a bright side. In the process we were introduced to New York City Relief, an organization that serves the homeless. This partnership taught us that a solution to such a complex challenge requires small and steady steps. It helped us realize that we could still make a difference by focusing on a small part of our initial solution: the mobile pop-up care booth.
Read more about this project here.
