Students from 23 universities across the United States and four foreign countries will gather at Emory University March 30-31 to compete in the fifth Emory Global Health Case Competition. Approximately 140 students will work in teams of six, including undergraduate, graduate and professional school students from a variety of disciplines. The 23 student teams will spend an intensive weekend developing innovative solutions for a 21st century global health challenge.

"This global health competition and its growing popularity across the United States and other countries illustrates the intense interest of students in undergraduate, graduate and professional schools in this important field of study," says Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, Emory vice president for global health and director of the Emory Global Health Institute. "The Emory Global Health Case Competition has gained a reputation as the leading national team event to showcase the creativity, passion and intellect of our future leaders in global health."

In addition to Emory, participating schools include Boston University, Claremont Graduate University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, ITAM (Mexico), McGill University (Canada), Northwestern, Oxford University (England), Princeton University, Tulane, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of California at San Francisco, University of Chicago, Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), University of Miami, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, Yale University, and Yeshiva University.

The winning team from Emory's intramural event will join the international competition.

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 university teams will receive this year’s case subject on Monday evening, March 26 in advance of the final weekend competition. Previous years’ case competition teams were charged with reducing severe childhood malnutrition in Ethiopia,  childhood obesity in Mexico, tobacco health burdens in Gujarat, India, and developing program priorities for a refugee health agency in three east African countries. A multidisciplinary external panel of judges will evaluate this year’s teams’ recommendations.

This year’s signature sponsor is GE, with additional external sponsorship by Alston & Bird, LLC, Danya International, John Snow, Inc., Northhighland Consulting, the Pendleton Consulting Group, the Ray Mikulich Charitable Fund, and Red Brick Brewing Company.