Five Yale students from diverse disciplines joined together to take on the Emory Global Health Case Competition. The competition, held in March, allows graduate and undergraduate students the opportunity to collaborate and develop solutions for global health issues.
The Yale team included Preeti Adhikary, Yale School of Management '21, Jiaying Chen, Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences ’24, William Eger Yale School of Public Health ‘21, Prastik Mohanraj, Yale College ‘23 and Samantha Ramirez, Yale School of Nursing ’22.
Since the competition was held virtually this year, all teams had to submit an executive summary of their ideas as well video presentations. The Yale team addressed the issue of decreasing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Bangladeshi and Rohingya in Rangpur, Chittagong, and Mymensingh, Bangladesh. They focused their presentation on building a system for equitable vaccine distribution through facilitating the registration of 55 million people and the administration of 40 million vaccines, particularly among hard-to-reach populations. They also outlined a plan for sustainability of the intervention in decreasing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and increasing equitable vaccine distribution.
As a genetics Ph.D. student, Chen said the competition was a great experience to learn about public health issues. “Although it was stressful because we only had one week to prepare the whole case while doing course work, it was very interesting to come together and create a problem for the good of a world population.”
“Because our teammates were from several Yale schools, we had the added value of approaching our problem with a good balance of ideas,” added Eger. “And, it also gave us the opportunity to learn from each other about life experiences not just academic work. That was a very rewarding part of this process.” Nursing student Ramirez said the YIGH Case Competition prepared them for the Emory challenge. “Once we heard our topic, we were very clear on what we needed to do based on our experience with the YIGH competition.”
This year’s competition drew a significant spike in applicants with 52 teams competing. The Yale students found the experience exciting and said they would do it again but look forward to presenting in person next time in a pandemic-free environment.
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