From Sprint to Solution: Meet the Winners of the 2026 Public Health Innovation Lab

So I would love, you know, for our listeners to learn a little bit more about your project, Harmony.

So if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about your project, what it is in a nutshell, and then also sharing what initially inspired you all to focus on this particular public health challenge affecting college communities.

So Harmony, the idea of it is a financial wellness app, and we designed it specifically for young adults that kind of integrates your personal finance tools that you already have, but combining it with mental health support.

And so the app helps students and young adults budget, track their spending, set financial goals for themselves, and build really good healthy money habits, but also addressing the stress and anxiety that comes quite often accompanies these challenges.

And I think that's the gap we were trying to address with the app.

And the whole app centers around your personalized insights, the resources that you'd be able to get, and combining that with mood check-in and wellness features.

And I think It was a cohesive way to combine both mental health and a very practical part of your life.

And so the users, we would hope, would gain a better understanding of both their financial behaviors and the emotions and moods that influence them.

And so our goal was to kind of educate with literacy, but also make actual change in the user's life.

And so that was kind of what we were going for it.

I would say she captured the essence of harmony perfectly, but I think if we were to talk about why we chose to focus on this and the community that we were choosing to focus on, I think that us being college students, a majority of us have had to navigate some sort of financial instability and especially going out into the real world outside of college as well.

I think that it's a very difficult time for a lot of people adjusting to the new demands of adulting and life and you know it's it's a very much you know talked about thing and so we were really looking to kind of address that I think like all you said that gap between people's financial stability and their spending and also their mental well-being and so again we created Harmony just to try and address that gap and hopefully make spending and tracking people's health a lot easier for not just university students but you know the wide community because I'm sure Financial instability and mental well-being is not just a struggle or like a stressor for people in that age range, but it's a struggle and stressor for people in all age ranges after we've gone into some state of having that level of independence in our lives.

Absolutely.

To add on to what Mahi said, I think us being college students and having these issues ourselves definitely was a big part of it.

And also recognizing that it's not just us, like it's literally it's affecting everybody around us.

But still, there was nothing specifically targeting that one niche.

Yeah.

I think to us, it just became obvious at some point that this is what we needed to pursue.

Originally, we weren't even looking at this issue, but eventually by the time we got to it, we realized by talking to users and even the other people, the other groups working in the innovation lab, that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.

I appreciate you giving us some context for those who may not know exactly what your project was focusing on, because this sounds like one truly a culmination, obviously, of the three of your majors and your work and everything you even just shared on this podcast so far, right? But also really addressing a real problem for not only college students, but like you said, many individuals, right? And kind of getting at the behavioral psychology almost of financial spending habits, I think is really cool because I have never heard of an app that does that, right? So I could use Harmony, you know? So I think that's a really innovative niche that you kind of tapped into.