On Saturday, February 11th, VIGH’s Student Advisory Council hosted its 7th annual Global Health Case Competition. This year, the Competition was held in conjunction with Vanderbilt’s first “Haiti Week,” co-hosted by VIGH and the Vanderbilt Center for Latin American Studies. The event brought several Haitian physicians and health experts to Nashville for a series of presentations on Haiti, its health care system, and social medicine. Guest presenters included Dr. Louis-Franck Telemaque (Medical Director of Port-au-Prince’s premier public hospital, the Hospital of the University of State of Haiti), Dr. Raymond Pierre (Cabinet Member of the Haitian Ministry of Health), and Dr. Christophe Millien (Deputy Director of Partners in Health - Mirebalais University Hospital). Almost 100 students – 15 teams – competed in the eight-day competition. This year’s case topic, “Improving Maternal Health Outcomes in Haiti by Expanding Access to Safe Surgery,” prompted teams to design and propose holistic, systems-level solutions to devise a strategy to reduce maternal mortality rates in Haiti through increased access to surgical care. The teams’ solutions were judged based on strategy, efficient use of data, specificity and feasibility toward the given case, delivery of the presentation, and innovation. It was an amazing experience seeing interdisciplinary teams working together to develop strategies to expand access to safe surgery in Haiti. First place was awarded to a team that included four of our current or incoming MPH students (photo above). You can find more photos of the event and other VIGH events on VIGH’s Flickr page.

Global VU, Vanderbilt’s international affairs journal, aims to highlight global health work being done at Vanderbilt and by our international partners in an effort to connect faculty, students, and staff interested in global health, as well as to raise awareness of issues impacting the health of people around the world. The Global Health Field Notes section includes recent blog posts authored by members of the Vanderbilt community. Read the latest blog posts here.

Vanderbilt students, staff and faculty are encouraged to contribute to this new global health section. Submit Here »

CIPHER HIV Fellowship Programme

Africa at a Crossroads: Student Research Grant Program

View our list of other funding opportunities here.