Harvard Global Health Case Competition 2016
How do you solve the world’s global health problems? Hand them off to a team of students! Better yet, invite students to compete at persuading senior health officials on a practical plan most likely to work in the real world. Such dreams contribute to the enthusiasm, energy, and impetus behind Harvard’s Global Health Case Competition. Organized and sponsored by the Public Health Leadership (PHL) Program in the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, the Case Competition, now in its second year, featured 58 students across ten competing teams in mid-February to present a solution to one of the world’s intractable global health challenges, based on a pre-selected global health case study. The case selected for the 2016 Harvard competition was “Ensuring Vaccine Supply for the Next Pandemic Flu: Will the World Be Ready?” developed in 2013 by Suerie Moon, MPA, PhD, Research Director and Co-Chair of the Forum on Global Governance for Health at the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI), and Rachel Gordon, MBA, HGHI Case Studies Manager, now at the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator at Harvard University. The Incubator, founded in 2014, leverages the educational programs and resources developed under HGHI with a deliberate focus on disseminating creative, effective strategies and tools for teaching and learning across both classrooms and the global landscape. Additional case studies and other teaching tools developed by the Incubator can be found in the Incubator's searchable resource repository.
'Ensuring Vaccine Supply for the Next Pandemic Flu' narrates a real-world dilemma of governance gaps and challenges around vaccines, and tells the story of tensions that followed the H1N1 and H5N1 outbreaks over vaccine supply, sharing, and access. After two days of competition in tightly timed sessions open to their faculty and peers, judges chose a winning team—serendipitously named “Team Crimson”—who will advance to compete (on a different case) in April in Atlanta, representing Harvard at the International Emory Global Health Case Competition.
Participating students were a mixed group representing graduate studies in public health, medicine, business, engineering, government and health policy, design, and arts and sciences. While the top four winners in Atlanta will walk away with cash prizes, it’s not all about winning. For HSPH students in the public health leadership concentration, participation counts toward curricular requirements; and all students benefit from tailored workshop discussions, group practice sessions, presentation coaching, and the opportunity to think with faculty and peers about shaping a career that can bridge disciplines to help improve the world. Participants gain, too—whether they win or not—from personalized input on their ideas and presentation from the visiting judges. Judges for the 2016 Harvard competition included global experts in health policy, current and past visiting Menschel Senior Leadership Fellows, and public health faculty.
Want to participate (or recommend your students participate) in the competition next year? For more information, contact Cathy Tso at phl@hsph.harvard.edu.
photo courtesy Rachel Gordon