The grand finale of the 8^th Annual Global Health Case Competition was held on Saturday, February 11, 2023.  This year’s  competition attracted the highest number of participants, with a total of  ten teams , including  undergraduate and graduate students across the university. The goal of the competition, organized by the Eck Institute for Global Health (EIGH), is to promote multidisciplinary collaboration, train future global health leaders, and provide students with a real-world problem-based learning opportunity.

This year, 57 students were requested to provide the best strategies to address the  mental health crisis of healthcare workers in Dougherty County in the state of Georgia. On January 30, the students received the case promotion at a dinner seminar, and each team had a faculty mentor to guide them through their preparations. Due to the high number of teams that participated, the competition was conducted in two rounds. For round one, all teams provided a one-page executive summary of their solution as well as a ten-minute video with further details about their strategies to facilitate mental health challenges. Based on these materials, the judges selected four teams to proceed to a second round of the competition for live presentations on February 11.  

The 2023 teams are listed below, with the names of the finalists italicized:

• Kehinde Hassan, Eduarda Tartarella Nascimento, Megan Gehl, Julia Marine, Charlie Desnoyers (Team 1)
• Calvin Hawe, Kimberly Marfo, Kate Jackowski, Nathan Cole, Kat Lauinger, Meredith Bond (Team 2)
• Phoebe Dodge, Quinton Hayre, Cat Gargano, Miguel Blacutt, Brandon Fu, Kyeongmook Lee (Team 3)
• Ethan Harned, Jake Harris, Lizzie Stifel, Jake Corvera, Emily Burgess, Haley Nunez Team 4)
• Erin O'Callaghan, Michael McKenzie, Josef Ernst, Bohdan O'Shaughnessy, Josue Carias, Rachael Thumma (Team 5)
• Grace Galfano, Ciara Fay, Charith Pitta, Joseph London, Ayush Sindhwani (Team 7) 
•  Sergio Medina, Celia Bullock, Allie Wu, Matthew Scott, Kaitlyn Kelly, Jingdong Yang (Team 8)
• Julia Hawthorne, Crystal Lin, Ivy Clark, Nneze Ekowa, Ornella Joseph, Shivangi  Agrawal (Team 9)
• Shannon Culbert, Joseph Trinidad, TJ Walsh, Charlotte Burke (Team 10)
• Grace Hsu, Swindar Zhou, Samir El Idrissi, Joseph Afuso, Luis Avila, Liana Bigaud (Team 11)

Some of the participants reflected on their experiences in the competition.

“It (the competition) made me much more aware about the significant domestic health issues present here in America.”

“I appreciated the unique challenge of having to come up with a solution in a set time frame- I think it really challenged me creatively and intellectually.”

This year, the judges were Marie Donahue,  Robin Vida, Brandon Zabukovic, and Mary Clemency. They  commended all teams for their innovative  strategies to improve mental health and unanimously declared Team 8 as the winners of this year’s competition. Round two participants also voted for Team 10 as the Students’ Choice winner. The winning team will represent the University of Notre Dame at Emory University’s Morningside Global Health Case Competition in March 2023.

The  competition was organized by Marian Botchway, EIGH Assistant Director, Kelly Thomson, EIGH Business and Operations Coordinator, and Henry Kamugisha, a graduate student in the  Master of Science in Global Health program. Marian Botchway encouraged students to engage in next year’s case competition, which will commence with dinner seminars beginning in the fall, followed by the actual competition  in the early spring. For more information about the Global Health Case Competition, please visit https://globalhealth.nd.edu/education-training/undergraduate/global-health-case-competition/

The Eck Institute for Global Health at the University of Notre Dame endeavors to promote research, training, and service for the advancement of health standards for all people. The institute recognizes health as a fundamental human right and aims to support those in developing countries who are disproportionately impacted by preventable diseases. To learn more about the institute, please visit https://globalhealth.nd.edu/ 

Contact:

Marian Botchway 

Assistant Director

Eck Institute for Global Health / University of Notre Dame

mbotchwa@nd.edu / 574.631.1876

https://globalhealth.nd.edu / https://twitter.com/ndeckinstitute 

Originally published by Henry Kamugisha at globalhealth.nd.edu on February 24, 2023.