How do you feel?
Now is a great time to share with the release of How We Feel, a new app that uses the community’s help to track and fight COVID-19.
The app, which gained 170,000 unique users within the first week of its launch, was developed by an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team of researchers including Harvard Chan School professor Xihong Lin, MIT professor Feng Zhang, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann, and others. Other key Harvard personnel participating in the project are Gary King, Director of the Institute of Quantitative Social Science, Junior Fellow William Allen, and Harvard Chan School faculty members Jukka-Pekka Onnela and Yonatan Grad, along with Epidemiology PhD student Christine Tedijanto.
The app prompts you to share how you’re feeling each day within a few minutes. If you feel healthy, report that; if you feel unwell, share your current health conditions, symptoms, and test results. While the app requests basic demographic information and a zip code, it does not ask users for a name, phone number or email address, so your data is not identifiable and privacy is protected.
The self-reported data is then used to help researchers and public health officials pinpoint COVID-19 hotspots, predict areas that could experience spikes in COVID-19 cases, understand pertinent risk factors, and allocate resources such as testing sites.
In addition to helping health agencies better respond to the pandemic, you can also support the greater community the first time you download the app and complete a health check-in. For every unique user who signs up, HowWeFeel will donate a meal to people in need through the non-profit Feeding America.
To participate, download from the Apple Store or Google Play, and please help share with family, friends, and colleagues!
For more information, visit https://www.howwefeel.org/.
