{"id":112634,"date":"2023-04-20T17:18:19","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T21:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=112634"},"modified":"2023-04-21T12:45:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T16:45:05","slug":"med-students-have-impressive-showing-in-10k-bu-refugee-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2023\/04\/20\/med-students-have-impressive-showing-in-10k-bu-refugee-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Med Students Have Impressive Showing in BU Refugee Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

They didn\u2019t win the ultimate $10,000 prize, but a team of medical students came close, making the Final Four of Innovate@BU\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"Leah
Leah Hollander MD\u201923 explains her team\u2019s proposal to judges at the BU Refugee Challenge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Out of a field of 30 teams, representing 16 of Boston University\u2019s 17 colleges, one medical school student proposal reached the finals \u00a0\u201cCommunity Connection Through Cooking\u201d and a second team advanced to the semifinal round of eight with a presentation on an interactive nutrition website, \u201cRecipes for Refugees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d said Community Connection team member Leah Hollander(MD\u201923, MPH\u201923).<\/p>\n

\"Hassan
Hassan Beesley MD\u201923 at the BU Refugee Challenge explaining medical student team proposal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Community Connection team comprised medical students Hollander, Hassan Beesley (MD\u201923), Heejoo Kang (MD\u201926) and Alyssa Quinn (MD\u201926) and graduate student Gwendolyn Strickland (GMS\u201924 and BUSPH MPH\u201925). The proposal was a collaboration between the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Refugee Wellness Student Group, Boston Medical Center\u2019s (BMC) Refugee Women\u2019s Health Clinic and the hospital\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The semifinalist \u201cRecipes for Refugees\u201d team included first-year medical students Jessica Barmine, Monica Abou-Ezzi, and Emily Getzoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d been incubating this idea of doing group nutrition classes as part of prenatal care,\u201d said Sarah Kimball, MD, assistant professor of internal medicine and codirector of BMC\u2019s Immigrant Refugee Health Center (IRHC), which oversees and connects clients to programs like the women\u2019s health clinic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat these students did was to see there\u2019s some critical gaps that are going to keep patients from participating, and that\u2019s mainly around transportation,\u201d said Kimball.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a great lesson to learn that there\u2019s just a lot of steps in between having an idea and operationalizing it,\u201d said Beesley. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think that should be a barrier to anyone trying to achieve an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the pitches were incredible,\u201d said Innovate@BU Program Director for Social Entrepreneurship Katie Quigley-Mellor, who oversaw this year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

With the demands of a dual degree, Hollander was feeling the pressure as, in short order, she delivered her master\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The Community Connection team worked in the Refugee Women\u2019s Health Clinic at BMC\u2019s IRHC.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have real, tangible experience\u2026and 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,\u201d said Quigley-Mellor.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Utilizing the \u201cchallenge\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Connecting pregnant and postpartum Haitian migrants to affordable nutrition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,91,123],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112634"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112651,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112634\/revisions\/112651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}