Oscar Romero

Executive Summary

The NYC[x] Co-Labs: Accessible Mental Health Challenge emerged from a series of participatory workshops with community experts from Inwood and Washington Heights. In August 2018, NYCx Co-Labs engaged 35 Inwood/Washington Heights residents, representatives of community-based organizations, entrepreneurs and educators in a series of workshops on housing, education, health, arts & culture, small businesses, and immigrant affairs to identify priority issues in the community. 

The outcomes of the first five issue area workshops–held in September 2018–can be found in the report: Building Community Power through creative Technologies. The community unanimously advocated to have another community workshop focused particularly on the needs of immigrant communities.

The results of the sixth workshop can be found in the report: Building Community Power: Challenges to immigrant communities.

This research was complemented with six one-on-one interviews with local healthcare professionals and stakeholders, 191 relevant data points from the OneNYC challenge survey, expert interviews, a literature review, and participatory workshops with NYC City agencies.

More information about the data collected from the community workshops can be accessed on the project’s interactive data visualization page.

After extensive researchand iteration with NYC Agencies and the Community Technology Board, the NYCx Co-Labs Accessible Mental Health Challenge proposed the following question to its network of  global innovators:

How might we improve mental health among Latinx youth (13-18 years old) in Inwood and Washington Heights?

To learn more about the challenge design, selection process, selection criteria, see the NYCx Co-Labs Accessible Mental Health Challenge Manual.