FreeCare MD wins Rep. Lori Trahan’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Massachusetts’s Third District
Rep. Lori Trahan has named Thais Stanzione of Hale Middle School and Lucia Stanzione of Hale Middle School as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Massachusetts’s Third District.
When asked what inspired the creation of FreeCare MD, the students said, ”Why did we create this app? Finding free care can be very difficult, especially when it’s urgent and you or your loved ones are in pain. Anybody’s circumstances can change, we saw many negative impacts during COVID. What if you/your loved ones can no longer afford medical insurance? Where would you turn to for a toothache, ear infection or a pediatric appointment? Instead of not getting a checkup, or researching for hours on end trying to find a free care facility, we created an app that integrates all free medical clinics in the State in one app..
Our Inspiration:
Our amazing friend Julia, who is a medical student in New York, is the one who inspired us to create this app. She is one of many kind doctors that provide free care to those in need. We hope that our app connects the free care doctors/clinics with the uninsured/underinsured and help people in need stay healthy.”
The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.