BU Interdisciplinary Student Team Places in Emory Global Health Competition, also Wins Audience Choice Award
Boston University was well represented at the Emory Global Health Case Competition on March 31. The team of six included a medical student, an MD/MBA student, three MBA/MPH students and a doctoral student in biomedical engineering, placed second out of a roster of 23. This was the first year that BU has participated. The team also won the “Audience Choice Award” voted by their peers in the contest.
The team members were Ivan Busulwa (MBA/MPH’12), Darash Desai (ENG’14), Meg Meyer (MBA/MPH’12), Sunil Nair (MD/MBA’13), Catherine Shih (MBA/MPH’13), and Daniel Silva (MED’15).
The multidisciplinary competition, developed and coordinated by the Emory Global Health Institute’s Student Advisory Committee, includes graduate and undergraduate students from numerous fields including agricultural and life sciences, business, engineering, law, medicine, nursing, public health, theology, the social sciences and the humanities.
The Global Health Contest is designed to raise awareness of and develop innovative solutions for 21st century global health issues. Teams receive a global health-related case that requires an interdisciplinary approach to formulate recommendations that may involve issues such as health care policy, public health implementation and planning, business partnership/investment, medical research, logistics management, faith/cultural understanding, and international law.
The 2012 case had political overtones as well as health and development issues. The question was: “Develop a strategy for Canadian aid to Sri Lanka that deals with the health and resettlement issues of the Tamil population, keeping in mind the resistance of the Sinhalese government to accusations of war crimes and persecution, and recognizing the presence of a great many Tamil refugees in Canada.”