Healthy University Dashboard

The wide spread poverty, chronic conflict and political instability resulted in great physical, social and mental suffering for the people of Sudan. Covid-19 crisis exacerbated the situation. The Healthy University Dashboard (HUD) is a user friendly, mobile -customized Digital Platform for universities and their communities in Sudan to work in and track their progress in health promotion plans in a fun, interactive environment. The aim is to Improve  health, wellness and academic performance of university members and related communities. 

The HUD includes: a Healthy University Community and Citizen Platforms, an E- Volunteering forum, Health Promoting University Audit, E-healthy Items Marketplace and Covid-19 Dashboard.

HUD is an inclusive ecosystem for health promotion that integrates  all university members regardless of their social or physical status. The content is customized to accommodate the needs of vulnerable community members. It can be replicated and expanded to become The Regional/ Global Healthy University Dashboard.

Sudanese people have been subjected to multiple traumas in the past few years. The government continued to struggle with the economic, political and health crisis. The stressed health system is impacted hard by Covid-19 pandemic.

 The 31 universities in Sudan are facing the challenges of fund reduction and brain drain, which affected the academic and health environment. Covid-19 experience has revealed a low health awareness leading to  low compliance of people with the health precautions.

While millions of Sudanese people own mobile phones, technology is not widely used in health promotion.

Youth mobilization has kept the country moving. Young people and women of Sudan have been in the heart of the political revolution and the re-building efforts afterwards. The Healthy University Dashboard aims to capitalize- on and further develop the social and political movement to encourage universities and communities to improve their health. Universities if transformed, can become leading bodies for further change in the community.

The Healthy University Dashboard is a cloud-based, mobile –customized, easy to use Digital Platform designed to enable universities and communities in Sudan to voluntarily and positively compete in a challenge to execute institutional and individual health promotion plans in a fun, interactive environment. It includes:

-          E-Healthy University Community: targets Students, employees to self  register  to monitor and improve their health habits . It includes health promotion content.

-          E-Volunteering forum: a place to access events and link volunteers  to initiatives to encourage individuals contribute to a Healthy  University.

-          E-Health Promoting University Challenge: includes indicators to track the progress of universities.

-          Healthy item market place to sell and buy affordable items.

-          Covid-19 Dashboard: gives update about the local epidemic.

Users create individual and institutional profiles and start using the platform to work in improving their health. They view the progress of other users in the Dashboard which will create positive competition and increase accountability.

The Healthy University Dashboard is inclusive to all university communities in Sudan. It is an ecosystem for students, employees, and other university members regardless of their social, physical status or income. The purpose is to empower individuals to take charge of their health and participate in a challenge for improving in-campus health. Another benefit is to attract university management to adopt a participatory institutional health promotion strategy.

Our project will start in Five universities from different regions in Sudan. The aim is enroll 60% of the universities by five years.

Benefits to individuals in campus:

-        Fair  Access to health information to adopting healthy life style, in positive competition and accountability with other users. The content is customized to:

        - The mental, social and physical needs of Women.

        - Requirement of people with disabilities.

       - Needs of poor members of university community and other vulnerable             groups. 

-          The HUD users can  obtain affordable local  healthy items from the On-line marketplace.  This is important knowing the high poverty rate in Sudan where many people cannot afford healthy food.

-          A network connecting voluntary events and initiatives to tap-on and organize the Sudanese cultural values of solidarity and sense of community. This platform will improve coordination and efficiency of voluntary work.

Benefits to the Universities:

-         An E-Challenge- application to observe the progress of the university as a health promoting institute in comparison to other universities. A set of key performance indicators for the healthy physical, social and mental university will be monitored through the Dashboard. This can transform the in-campus  environment and improve the wellness of people and the quality of education.

-          The Covid-19 tracking dashboard to assist decisions for control           and help disseminate health messages to raise the awareness of the community and control health events.

Benefits to the public:

-          Local producers of healthy items can offer their products in the E-marketplace.

The core purpose of the Healthy University Dashboard is to improve the health and quality of life for ALL university members and related communities in Sudan.  

It addresses the Post Covid-19 need for accelerated health awareness raising and adoption of healthy life style.  It provides a platform for health behavioral change  by providing health awareness and behavioral change content to individuals. 

The Healthy University Dashboard will create a mass public change because it is easy to access and be used.  It will improve the physical,  social and mental health  in multiple university campuses and related communities. 

The Healthy University Dashboard is a Concept. The Digital Platform is not developed yet and the key performance indicators for the health promoting university under process.  

The Health Promoting University Dashboard is the only digital platform in Sudan where universities and individuals can self register to participate in  "health promoting university" initiate. IT acts as a personal support system or a friend that can be reached anytime and from anywhere for support. Its a platform for information, encouragement, inspiration and motivation to act. 

The HUD is an ecosystem for universities and related communities to interact for health promotion. The monitoring dashboard and the public display of results is meant to be a driving force for universities and individuals to improve.

The Healthy University Dashboard can expand to include universities from outside Sudan. It can become A GLOBAL Platform for universities and individuals to enroll and work collectively to improve their lives. It can be replicated in other countries and other sectors. 

The Platform has the potential to expand to include more services in addition to health. Smart Campus Audit, Green Campus Audit, e-Learning Application, Affordable bookstore E-market are few examples.

The following Key Performance indicators will be used for outcomes and outputs:

-          Number of individual users of the HUD.

-          Number of Universities participating in the Health Promoting University Challenge.

-          % increase in individuals adopting healthy life style (from enrolled universities). 

-          % increase in universities implementing a health promoting strategy

-         % increase in green university campus in Sudan.

-         % of universities adopting environment friendly initiatives (e.g waste recycling, disability friendly campus)

I am looking for a partner/s who will technically and financially support my solution. My hope is to get connected to a Global Health Organization or Foundation interested in health promotion to support enrollment of the solution. I want to develop a world class application that is useful to my people and can be used anywhere else for the benefit of humanity.

My plan is to set a start-up for the project. As equity and social advancement are important to me, I want to do the work with organizations with a similar mission. 

The partner can also support the universities with needs for implementing health promotion plans while enrolled in the challenge.

I want a software expert group to develop and test the Healthy University Dashboard to make sure we end -up with a quality product with international standard. My ideal partner is an organization or company interested in HEALTH FOR ALL roll-out.

I want a partner to fund the cost of the development of the product and launching a start-up to maintain the service.

The Healthy University Dashboard gives special attention to women in campus. 

I am planning a Women Health Promoting Workplace Platform  (WHPU Platform)  in Sudan which will be part of the scale-up strategy for the Healthy University Dashboard. 

The WHPW Platform is a challenge to improve workplaces for women. It benefits from the Healthy University Initiative to improve women health in workplace with specific attention to mental health, chronic disease control, breast and cervical cancer screening programmes.