By Erin Jester
When a highly contagious respiratory virus threatens to sicken thousands and shut down one of the largest employers in a metropolitan area, is 36 hours enough time to come up with a solution to avert disaster?
That’s what 25 students worked around the clock to find out during the University of Florida One Health Center of Excellence’s inaugural case competition, held Nov. 8 and 9.
About two-thirds of the participants were from the College of Public Health and Health Professions, but other students represented the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the College of Engineering, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Business and the College of Veterinary Medicine. To cast the widest net for participants, the competition was open to all UF students.
“We wanted to make sure these teams are diverse, to emulate a situation that some people might see in the real world,” said Samantha Andritsch, a second-year Master of Health Science in One Health student and communications coordinator for the event.
Teams were composed of undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students, which is unusual for case competitions. Some students registered individually and were put in teams on Friday morning, and others formed their groups well before then.
“When I saw the ads for the case competition, I realized that it’s what I’m going to be doing every day for my career, so I wanted to get some experience and get my feet wet,” said Francisco Somarriba, a first-year Master of Health Administration student.
Somarriba and classmates Bailey Howard, Bailey Watson and Helen Eisenberg, also first-year MHA students, registered as a team – “The Suits” – and met a few times before the competition to get to know each other and build a game plan. This was their first case competition.
“This is a test run for us,” Watson said.
The case prompt was an outbreak of a strain of avian flu that jumped from a beef cow infected with the virus to workers in a meat processing plant in Omaha, Nebraska. Students developed proposals for surveilling and controlling the fictional outbreak, analyzing the impact on the local economy and national food production, recommending policies to help government agencies respond to the outbreak and creating a plan for how to communicate with the public.
Students had less than 36 hours to solve the case and present their solutions – much shorter than other case competitions, which can last for up to a week. The timeline was an added challenge for students, Andritsch said.
The One Health Center is directed by Michael von Fricken, Ph.D., an associate professor in the PHHP department of environmental and global health. The center hosted an event last year coinciding with One Health Day, which is Nov. 3, but organizers wanted to dream bigger in 2024.
“This year we really wanted to find a new way to introduce One Health to the UF community, and this is where we landed,” Andritsch said. “We’re hoping this event is a way to introduce people to One Health, and also introduce people to the resources UF offers.”
UF was the first to offer degree programs in One Health and is the leader of One Health in academic institutions on the East Coast. The case competition, along with providing some hands-on practice for students, could also be a tool for recruitment, Andritsch said.
Emily DeRuyter, a fourth-year public health Ph.D. student with a concentration in One Health, registered individually. Coordinators grouped her with One Health MHS student Meredith Zahara and undergraduate students Sarah Milbrandt and Lourdes Abubakar. They dubbed themselves “The CommuniGators.”
“I’m just open to the experience,” DeRuyter said just before the competition began, adding that this was her first case competition.
The next afternoon, by unanimous vote, judges named The CommuniGators the winners and handed them a $1,000 check.
Andritsch said the inaugural competition was a success, and the organizers plan to make it an annual event. Next year, coordinators want to make the competition longer so teams have more time to address the full One Health framework.
Another goal is expanding recruitment to garner more students and more diverse academic backgrounds. In-person recruitment on campus could give organizers a chance to reach students who may be interested but unsure of how participating could benefit them.
A business student may not think their expertise relates to public health, but a major piece of the puzzle in addressing public health issues is economic impact, Andritsch said. Apart from planning how to contain the fictional virus outbreak during the One Health case competition, students were asked to evaluate how shutting down a beef processing plant in Nebraska – the largest exporter of red meat in the United States – would affect local employment, state revenue and the nationwide supply chain.
“You don’t necessarily see a direct pipeline from business schools into the health field,” she said. “[One Health case competitions] are opportunities to see where fields can overlap and interact.”