Creative Contributory Contests to Spur Innovation in Sexual Health

Abstract

Sexual health campaigns are often designed “top-down” by public health experts, failing to engage key populations. Using the power of crowdsourcing to shape a “bottom-up” approach, this note describes two creative contributory contests (CCC) to enhance sexual health campaigns. We provide guidance for designing CCCs to improve HIV and other STD testing.

Wisdom of the Crowds: Crowd-Based Development of a Logo for a Conference Using a Crowdsourcing Contest

“…Indeed, the logo contest created diversity of thought and independence by recruiting young people from around the world. This is consistent with other global literature demonstrating that ‘bottoms up’ methods like crowdsourcing, may be increasingly important as it is a cost-effective means to generate creative, new ideas(6, 15). In contrast, ‘top down’ approaches may not be as effective due to lack of community engagement and cost issues(16).…”

“…Crowdsourcing has a group of individuals complete a task, often as part of an open contest (6-8). This has been widely used in businesses and is a methodology to democratize problem solving(8, 9).…”

“…In recent years, there have been increasing examples of its use within sexual health. For example, crowdsourcing has been used in the development of images promoting sexual health(6), videos promoting HIV testing(7), and policy development(10). To date, there has not been any published data on evaluating the use of crowdsourced contests to engage with communities during a medical conference.…”

Leading by Example: Web-Based Sexual Health Influencers Among Men Who Have Sex With Men Have Higher HIV and Syphilis Testing Rates in China (Preprint)

“…Vulnerable populations like MSM may distrust outside authorities but find advice from known influencers who carry credibility [45]. For example, influencers could serve as steering committee members of crowdsourcing contests that aim to promote testing [30,46]. Influencers could also serve as leaders in network-based, social media interventions to allow health messages to reach more MSM [37].…”

Social Media Interventions to Promote HIV Testing

“…For example, crowdsourcing can be used to design a social media intervention promoting HIV testing. Crowdsourcing transfers a task from an individual to a group, assisted by multisectoral input [7]. Our randomized controlled trial showed that crowdsourcing can be an effective tool to promote HIV testing through social media [8].…”