InflaTracker Wins Rep. Castro’s (TX-20) 2019 Congressional App Challenge
Rep. Joaquin Castro has named four San Antonio students as the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 20th district. Keystone School’s Anabelle Cross, Shreya Chaudhary, Ariana Chaudhary and Sarah Cross submitted InflaTracker, an app designed to help persons with Crohn’s disease
When asked why they were passionate about creating app that helps persons with Crohn’s disease the students replied,“Anabelle has been suffering from Crohn’s disease, a disease that inflames certain parts of the intestine, since the age of seven. Crohn’s, a rare, chronic disease, causes trouble digesting certain foods. We entered the Congressional App Challenge (CAC), trying to design an app for people like Anabelle who are struggling with Crohn’s disease and finding the right foods to eat to decrease the amount of flare-ups.” They hope to encourage other students to better their communities by using their computer science skills.
Over 10,000 students registered for the 2019 Congressional App Challenge. These students created and submitted 2,177 functioning apps, marking the end of the most successful Congressional App Challenge to date. All told, 304 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 48 states, Puerto Rico, the Mariana Islands, and Washington, D.C.
The CAC is an 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. The non-profit Internet Education Foundation provides the CAC with supplemental staffing and support. In the five years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded 1134 App Challenges across 48 states. Thousands of functional apps have been created by over 25,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.