By Erin Jester
The students of UF’s College of Public Health and Health Professions are participating in more case competitions than ever, racking up accolades and hands-on experience for their future careers.
While the Department of Health Services, Research, Management and Policy’s Master of Health Administration students have regularly attended national case competitions for more than a decade, the Department of Biostatistics and the Department of Environmental and Global Health have recently begun offering these experiences for students, as well.
A case competition is an event in which teams of students work in a limited timeframe to solve a real-world problem, referred to as the case. Cases are often actual challenges faced by a health care organization such as a hospital, and professionals from those organizations are sometimes on the panel of judges. Apart from challenging students to come up with creative solutions, the competitions provide valuable experience with teamwork and presentation skills.
M.H.A. students had a uniquely successful year, scoring first-place wins at two prestigious competitions.
The winning streak began in March at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Health Administration Case Competition, where UF’s team placed first and received $12,000. Seven months later, another UF team snagged the top prize at Baylor University’s Robbins Case Competition in Healthcare Management.
This year, UF placed second at the American College of Healthcare Executives, third at the National Association of Health Services Executives, fifth at Ohio State University, where the competition is limited to first-year M.H.A. students, and was a semifinalist at Pennsylvania State University.
Because of students’ success over the last two years, UF’s teams expanded into other competitions this year, including Baylor University’s exclusive competition that invites only 12 schools.
“We’ve never had this recognition,” said Ara Jo, Ph.D., a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Research, Management and Policy and primary faculty advisor for her department’s case competition teams since 2022. “I’m very happy to see this – awards and placements everywhere.”
The win at the University of Alabama was especially prestigious, as it is regarded as the largest and fiercest of the M.H.A. case competitions.
At first, it was intimidating to be in the room with teams from schools that have historically swept the competition, said Mary Alfano, a second-year M.H.A. student who was named ‘best presenter’ at both Ohio State’s case competition in March and Baylor’s in October.
“I think we just focused on what we knew how to do, how to create the best strategy and do our best. And ultimately, we were able to beat those teams, which was really cool,” Alfano said.
In addition to getting hands-on experience at case competitions, students can come away with new connections and even jobs.
Many judges hold leadership positions at large medical centers and nationwide health care providers, and use the competitions to recruit potential employees, Jo said. At Penn State, the three highest-ranked teams present their proposals to CEOs of real organizations.
Loretta Morgan, a first-year M.H.A. student, wanted to participate in the Penn State case competition in October to see how she could handle the pressure.
She’s used to working on more general problems in her coursework, but the competition at Penn State challenged teams to come up with solutions for a real hospital’s problem with nurse retention rates in just two days.
“I think that’s so much more of a glimpse into what real life is going to look like,” Morgan said.
Morgan and her teammates advanced to the semifinals with a proposal for using AI to suggest individualized compensation packages based on personal information provided by employees.
“Usually, these problems are problems that have perpetuated for years, and they actually do need the solution,” Morgan said. “Sometimes that Band-Aid solution has to happen within 24 hours.”
Walking back to her car at the end of her first day at the Penn State competition, Morgan realized she had gotten something more out of it than the knowledge that she could think on her feet and maintain a cool head under pressure.
“I just remember thinking, this is absolutely the right career field for me,” she said.
The Department of Biostatistics in April held its second DataFest, a big data-focused case competition sponsored by the American Statistical Association, which challenges students to analyze and find meaning in complex data sets.
In 2023, DataFest participants analyzed data to advise the American Bar Association on ensuring the appropriate legal experts are available to support its pro bono legal advice site. This year, students focused on engagement data from an online interactive statistics textbook.
Steven Foti, Ph.D., an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Biostatistics, said he encourages students from all disciplines to consider joining the weekend-long competition because there isn’t enough time to create overly complex statistical models.
“There is a ton of data that we throw at them, and they only really have one full day to work with it,” he said. “So, I think it gives them a nice experience to work with others as part of a multidisciplinary team, be creative, ask good questions, and really just let their curiosity lead the way.”
In November, UF’s One Health Center of Excellence hosted its inaugural case competition, which was open to all UF students, from undergraduate to doctoral, and drew competitors from six different colleges. Organizers said they hoped to draw students from non-public health programs to emulate a real-life crisis containment scenario, where health experts would work alongside economists, communicators and data scientists to create the most comprehensive solution.
Another realistic factor of the One Health case competition was its short timeline. Teams had less than 36 hours to brainstorm and present their solutions for controlling a fictional outbreak of avian flu at a midwestern meat processing plant.
Emily DeRuyter, a fourth-year public health Ph.D. student with a concentration in One Health, said she enjoyed learning about crisis communication during her first case competition, which her team won.
“It was an interesting way to consider public health problems and how we go about communicating science with the public,” she said.