SOM Students Help Cross-Disciplinary Team Win Yale's First Global Health Case Competition

Two Yale SOM students were part of the team that won Yale's inaugural Global Health Case Competition on November 10. Held at the Yale School of Public Health, the competition drew 20 teams composed of students from across the University's professional schools.

The six members of the winning team, which dubbed itself "Salovey and Sons Consulting Company" after Yale's provost and president-elect, spanned four of Yale's schools. The team will represent Yale at Emory University's international Global Health Case Competition on March 23.

Winning team members include MBA student Yi Zhou '14 and joint MBA-MD student Bingnan Zhang '14, as well as Hilary Rogers, a student in the Yale College/Yale School of Public Health joint-degree program; Jordan Sloshower, a student at the School of Medicine; and Javier Cepeda and Ryan Boyko, both students at the School of Public Health.

The team had less than one week to research and propose solutions on an assigned topic—health, economic, and social disparities among miners in South Africa. Teams presented their solutions to a 20-judge panel that included Yale faculty as well as public health practitioners and consultants.

As a joint degree student, Zhang said, she was very excited when the competition was announced. "I looked at the problem from both the public health and the business perspective," she said. "Our team is comprised of very policy-driven epidemiology PhDs and medical students as well as SOM students. I feel that I was able to act as a facilitator to bring these two perspectives together."

Zhou said he valued the opportunity to connect with the broader Yale community. "I was probably the only one in the team with no public health background, but I think my value came from my ability to wear a business hat and think from the perspectives of a business leader," he said. "I was able to take a step back and connect the dots among various stakeholders in this complex problem, a skill that SOM's integrated curriculum taught me."