On Saturday, February 27th, a large group of students gathered at the Li Ka Shing Building on the UC Berkeley campus to participate in the first ever UC Berkeley Intramural Global Health Case Competition. 9 interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate, graduate, and PhD-level students from UCB—all together, around 60 students—gave presentations based on a complex global health case of the need to tackle tobacco control in the North Sumatra Province of Indonesia.
When teams signed up for the competition, they had no idea which public health area would be thrown at them. In fact many of the teams did not even know their teammates when intramural planning began. Many met at information sessions for the Intramural hosted by the UC Berkeley Center for Global Public Health and PIH Engage (a student group). Once teams formed, all they knew was that they would need to work hard to come up with unique solutions to a global health case over the course of the week leading up to the Intramural. One week before the intramural, they were sent the global health case and many worked frantically to prepare.
The teams were fighting for the one available UC Berkeley spot at the Emory International Global Health Case Competition in Atlanta, slotted to take place in April 2016. The international competition brings multidisciplinary teams together from 24 universities to develop strategies to reduce 21st century global health challenges. Last year, UC Berkeley took home first prize in Atlanta, spawning a lot of interest on campus for this year’s competition.
The judging took place in two rounds. The first was a closed-door judging session. Through creative innovation and teamwork with their groups the week prior, each student team presented their proposals in front of a panel of 2 judges. The judges, who used a pre-determined scoring system to score the presentations, chose 3 finalist teams. After lunch, the finalist round began, with the final teams presenting in front of a room of their peers and 6 judges.
The competition was fierce but one team came out on top. The winning team members were: Aarti Kumar, Hemaxi Desai, Nehaa Khadka, Jennifer Liu, Anchal Ahuja, and Tyler Schmeckpeper. The team was comprised of both undergraduate and graduate students from the School of Public Health, Haas School of Business, Letters and Science, and the Masters of Translational Medicine program. Second and third place teams were equally diverse. Their names are listed below.
There was a lot of positive energy at this friendly competition, highlighting the interest and passion for global health on the Berkeley campus at all student levels. Organizers from the UC Berkeley Center for Global Health, PIH Engage (UC Berkeley student group), and other dedicated student volunteers from last year’s winning team, were shocked by the response of students wanting to compete. To get to the final 9 teams, they had to implement an application process.
The hope? That this event help generate similar global health events at UC Berkeley, in the Bay Area, and on the West Coast, which currently has no competition like Emory’s on the East Coast. If Berkeley is any indication, there is much more student interest that can be tapped—and much opportunity for friendly team competitions to encourage students from different backgrounds to work together and make a positive global impact.
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Second Place Team: Leah Cha, Maria Mindanao, Gregory Ow, Jiawen “Fred” Liao
Third Place Team: Anjili Shah, Anjali Jain, Nathan Aminpour, Alison Rose, Rachel Crowley, Aruna Rajendran
Judges: Professor Art Reingold (Epi), Professor Lee Riley (IDV), Dr. Hildy Fong (CGPH), Dr. Phuoc Le (UCSF HEAL, SPH), Dr. Charlotte Smith (EHS), Robbie Snyder (IDV PhD prgrm)