Emory University and the Morningside Foundation have deepened their long partnership by collaborating on a multidisciplinary international student competition aimed at addressing real-world, critical global health challenges.
The Morningside Foundation has awarded a $500,000 grant to support the Emory Global Health Institute's (EGHI) International Emory Global Health Case Competition. The contest has been renamed the Emory Morningside Global Health Case Competition, signifying a partnership and commitment to advance global health and train the next generation of global health leaders.
"The Morningside Foundation is unwavering in its commitments to improving global health and fostering innovation through education," says Jeffrey P. Koplan, MD, MPH, vice president for global health at Emory University and founder of the Emory Global Health Institute.
"Through the foundation's generous gift, the Emory Morningside Global Health Case Competition will further accelerate the engagement of students across the globe in seeking real-world multidisciplinary solutions to urgent global health challenges."
Beginning in 2009, the first global health case competition sponsored by EGHI included 40 Emory students on eight multidisciplinary teams who presented strategies for alleviating severe acute childhood malnutrition in Ethiopia.
Today the competition has grown to include teams from six continents, including competitors from China, Uganda, the Netherlands and South Korea. Competitors come from diverse disciplines, including the health sciences, business, law, theology, and more. The annual event now features two global health case competitions, one intramural and one international.
"Universities are active participants in finding solutions to real-world problems, and students' educational experiences should reflect the same. A business plan competition is one way to encourage students to put into practice what they have learned as they will surely be called upon to do when they leave school and enter the job market," says Gerald Chan, co-founder of the Morningside group.
Previous participants in the case competition value the collaborative nature of the competition and the opportunity to join a cohesive team.
"The most rewarding part of the case competition was working on an interdisciplinary team with such incredible students. I learned so much from them, and I think learning how to collaborate with people from different disciplines on a cohesive team is a critically important professional lesson that I'm not getting in other parts of my graduate training but got during the case competition," says Sarah Connolly, member of 2018 winning team from Emory University.
