Introduction
How can mobility systems bridge the healthcare gap in rural communities? The Alabama Black Belt—stretching across multiple counties rich in history and cultural strength—faces significant transportation and healthcare access challenges. Sparse transit coverage, long travel distances to clinics and hospitals, and workforce shortages create barriers that limit timely medical care for residents.

This competition invites University of Alabama students to design innovative, data-driven transportation and land-use solutions that improve access to healthcare services in rural Alabama. Participants will explore how integrated mobility, analytics, and infrastructure planning can empower residents with more reliable, affordable, and efficient ways to reach essential medical services.

Problem Statement
The goal of this competition is to develop actionable strategies that enhance transportation access to healthcare facilities in the Alabama Black Belt region. Teams will select one or more counties within the Black Belt as their study region and will use available spatial and contextual information to measure, analyze, and improve transportation-to-healthcare access performance in rural settings.

Participants will examine how geographic distribution, travel times, socioeconomic conditions, and transportation resources interact to shape healthcare accessibility, and will analyze the challenges associated with providing mobility and access to medical resources in rural communities.

The primary objective is to design, propose, and evaluate mobility strategies that increase access to healthcare services for rural populations—for example: demand responsive services, novel routing methods, microtransit integration, trip aggregation strategies, non-emergency medical transport coordination, or multimodal first/last mile approaches.

Teams will produce a comprehensive plan demonstrating how improved mobility options could strengthen healthcare access. Teams may also propose new healthcare delivery locations (e.g., a satellite clinic or mobile clinic strategy) if such additions are justified by data and if they meaningfully improve rural access.

Teams will complete the following tasks during the competition:

1. Define Study Region and Baseline Conditions. Select one or more counties within the Alabama Black Belt and document baseline transportation-to-healthcare access conditions. Use available spatial and contextual datasets to quantify current access performance (e.g., travel time, distances, facility availability, population served, etc.).

2. Analyze Accessibility Determinants. Examine how geographic distribution, travel times, socioeconomic conditions, and existing transportation resources interact to shape healthcare accessibility in your selected region. Identify key barriers and structural limitations affecting rural residents.

3. Design Mobility Strategies to Improve Access. Develop proposed mobility interventions that would meaningfully improve transportation-to-healthcare access performance. These may include—but are not limited to—demand responsive services, microtransit integration, novel routing methods, trip aggregation strategies, non-emergency medical transportation coordination, and multimodal first/last mile solutions.

4. Evaluate Impacts and Expected Improvements. Demonstrate how your strategies improve access metrics compared to baseline conditions. Quantify expected performance changes (e.g., improved travel time, increased coverage, new connections to providers, reduced access burden for specific populations).

5. Optional: Consider New Healthcare Delivery Nodes. Teams may propose new healthcare locations (e.g., a satellite clinic or mobile clinic deployment) if such recommendations are justified by data and clearly result in improved rural access.

6. Communicate Findings for Decision-Making. Produce maps, diagrams, visualizations, and summary materials to support your analytical findings and recommendations. Present your proposed mobility strategy as a coherent, decision-ready plan stakeholders could evaluate, compare, and potentially implement.

Eligibility
You must be an enrolled student at University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) and can form a team of up to four students. Interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate and graduate students are strongly encouraged. All majors are welcome.

Stages of Competition

Stage 1: Kickoff & Training — January 23–30, 2025
This stage includes the official competition launch, an introductory workshop on GIS and data analysis tools, and an overview of Alabama health-access datasets. By the end of Stage 1, teams should have registered, formed, and selected a specific Black Belt county or counties as their study area.
Deliverable: A 250-word abstract describing team members, study region, and preliminary problem framing (due January 30).

Stage 2: Concept Design Submission — February 3–March 3, 2025
Teams identify key barriers and propose preliminary design concepts. Each team will analyze baseline conditions and outline its approach to improving access. A virtual review session will be offered mid-stage for feedback.
Deliverable: A short presentation (maximum 10 slides) and optional 3–5 minute recorded video summarizing concept design and proposed methods (due March 3).

Stage 3: Final Design Submission & Presentation — March 6–April 6, 2025
Teams refine their analysis and finalize their design proposals, quantifying expected improvements in healthcare accessibility.
 

Deliverables:

• A final report (maximum 10 pages + 1 page 11×17 map)

• An oral or recorded presentation summarizing methodology, results, and recommendations (presentations April 6)
  
  

Evaluation Criteria

Submissions will be evaluated on the following key dimensions:

• Problem Framing (15%)

• Technical Soundness (25%)

• Innovation (15%)

• Feasibility (15%)

• Practicality (15%)

• Quality of writing, presentation, and progress across deliverables (15%)

Available Data Sources

Study Region

• Alabama Black Belt region references (https://cber.culverhouse.ua.edu/resources/maps/)

• Healthcare in Alabama Black Belt (https://ir-api.ua.edu/api/core/bitstreams/427aece5-bd8a-4a04-b9f3-d41f72e1b7cb/content) 

Health facilities & access constraints

• HRSA Health Center Service Delivery Sites: https://data.hrsa.gov/topics/health-centers

• HRSA Health Workforce Shortage Areas: https://data.hrsa.gov/topics/health-workforce/shortage-areas

• HRSA Health Center Program Uniform Data System (UDS) Data: https://data.hrsa.gov/topics/healthcenters/uds/overview

• CMS Hospital General Information: https://data.cms.gov/provider-data/dataset/xubh-q36u

• CMS “Hospitals” topic: https://data.cms.gov/provider-data/topics/hospitals

• Alabama Dept. of Public Health (ADPH) Facilities Directory: https://www.alabamapublichealth.gov/providerstandards/directory.html

• ADPH data hub: https://www.alabamapublichealth.gov/data/

Mobility supply (transit & NEMT)

• Alabama Medicaid: https://medicaid.alabama.gov/content/4.0_programs/4.5_transportation.aspx

• BTS National Transit Map (Routes, Stops): https://www.bts.gov/national-transit-map

Road network & base geographies

• OpenStreetMap: https://download.geofabrik.de/north-america/us/alabama.html 

• ALDOT Open Data / Traffic (TDM Public) & GeoHub: https://data-algeohub.opendata.arcgis.com/

• Census TIGER/Line shapefiles: https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.html 

Demand, demographics & rurality

• CDC PLACES (county/tract/ZCTA) — modeled chronic disease, risk factors, health-related social needs at small areas: https://www.cdc.gov/places/tools/data-portal.html  

• USDA ERS Atlas of Rural & Small-Town America: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/atlas-of-rural-and-small-town-america/download-the-data 

• NHTS 2020-2022 + NextGen OD — national household travel survey microdata and OD tables for trip patterns & mode splits: https://nhts.ornl.gov/downloads