The University of Melbourne, Australia welcomed more than 60 students from 11 leading institutions across India to the Melbourne Global Centre in Delhi on 20 July, to compete in a case competition focused on developing solutions to public health challenges.
The inaugural India chapter of the Indo-Pacific Global Health Case Competition saw student teams develop innovative, evidence-based strategies to improve vaccine access and uptake among those living with disabilities in India. Among the participating universities were the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, the All India Institute of Medical Science, the Indian Institutes of Public Health in Delhi and Gandhinagar and the Christian Medical College in Vellore.
Each team included students across disciplines spanning medicine, engineering, commerce and social sciences. They worked together to develop proposals which considered cost-effectiveness, integration with existing infrastructure, and community engagement.
First place was awarded to a team from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, who proposed a pilot programme in Madhya Pradesh that would connect India’s national disability and immunisation registries to help identify at-risk households in the region. The programme would then establish three ‘reach tiers’ mapped against four immunisation delivery modes ranging from in-clinic vaccination to home-visit services, while also conducting an audit of clinics based on national accessibility standards.
The competition was organised jointly by the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and the Australia India Institute and marks a new frontier for university’s existing Indo-Pacific Global Health Case Competition held annually in Melbourne.
Professor Nathan Grills, Academic Director India for the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and Fellow of the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne said, “As public health practitioners, we need to work with different people and across multiple sectors to ensure we design and deliver interventions that successfully improve health outcomes".
