Med Students Have Impressive Showing in BU Refugee Challenge

They didn’t win the ultimate $10,000 prize, but a team of medical students came close, making the Final Four of Innovate@BU’s BU Refugee Challenge, with a proposal focused on relieving social isolation and meeting the nutritional needs of 200 postpartum or pregnant, newly arrived Haitian migrants.

Leah Hollander presenting
Leah Hollander MD’23 explains her team’s proposal to judges at the BU Refugee Challenge

Out of a field of 30 teams, representing 16 of Boston University’s 17 colleges, one medical school student proposal reached the finals  “Community Connection Through Cooking” and a second team advanced to the semifinal round of eight with a presentation on an interactive nutrition website, “Recipes for Refugees.”

“We were trying to develop creative ways to best incorporate systems we know are successful for increasing social support in a way that matches the specific needs of this population,” said Community Connection team member Leah Hollander(MD’23, MPH’23).

Hassan Beesley presenting
Hassan Beesley MD’23 at the BU Refugee Challenge explaining medical student team proposal

The Community Connection team comprised medical students Hollander, Hassan Beesley (MD’23), Heejoo Kang (MD’26) and Alyssa Quinn (MD’26) and graduate student Gwendolyn Strickland (GMS’24 and BUSPH MPH’25). The proposal was a collaboration between the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Refugee Wellness Student Group, Boston Medical Center’s (BMC) Refugee Women’s Health Clinic and the hospital’s Teaching Kitchen to offer cooking classes with a focus on the affordability, cultural relevance, and dietary recommendations for pregnant people using Haitian recipes and ingredients, and adapting them to microwave cooking, one of the most common cooking methods available in temporary housing.

The semifinalist “Recipes for Refugees” team included first-year medical students Jessica Barmine, Monica Abou-Ezzi, and Emily Getzoff.

“We’d been incubating this idea of doing group nutrition classes as part of prenatal care,” said Sarah Kimball, MD, assistant professor of internal medicine and codirector of BMC’s Immigrant Refugee Health Center (IRHC), which oversees and connects clients to programs like the women’s health clinic.

“What these students did was to see there’s some critical gaps that are going to keep patients from participating, and that’s mainly around transportation,” said Kimball.

It surprised Hollander and Beesley that the biggest impediment to implementing their program was transportation, with more than $10,000 of a $13,000 budget earmarked for rideshare and other services.

“I think it’s a great lesson to learn that there’s just a lot of steps in between having an idea and operationalizing it,” said Beesley. “But I don’t think that should be a barrier to anyone trying to achieve an idea.”

“All of the pitches were incredible,” said Innovate@BU Program Director for Social Entrepreneurship Katie Quigley-Mellor, who oversaw this year’s challenge. She was particularly impressed that two teams of medical students, working under a demanding academic and clinical schedule, found the will and time to participate.

With the demands of a dual degree, Hollander was feeling the pressure as, in short order, she delivered her master’s thesis in public health, participated in Match Day where she matched in a family medicine residency at University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill, while prepping for the Refugee Challenge.

The Community Connection team worked in the Refugee Women’s Health Clinic at BMC’s IRHC.

“They have real, tangible experience…and that is the point of a cross-campus initiative, to get students from different colleges talking to each other, learning about different initiatives and sharing skillsets and ideas,” said Quigley-Mellor.

Maria Gorskikh (Questrom ’23) took the top prize this year with Dream Venture Labs, a proposal that creates a place for refugees and migrants to develop their business ideas with the help of student volunteers from Boston-area universities.

The Innovate@BU Changemaker Challenge launched in the spring of 2019 with the Global Impact Challenge. They are sponsored through the BUild Lab IDG Capital Student Innovation Center that helps all BU students and recent alumni with translating ideas into reality by developing innovation and entrepreneurial skills with the goal of strengthening communities.

Utilizing the “challenge” format allows for educational opportunities within a compressed time frame that includes a two-day retreat focused on taking an entrepreneurial approach to solving social issues, as well as coaching, and connecting with local non-profits and policy makers.

All semifinalists received $500 toward their proposal and Quigley-Mellor said her office was encouraging semifinalists and finalists to take advantage of coaching and additional funding at the BUild Lab to continue to work on their projects.