2014 Global Health Case Competition

The Case

Over one million people die annually from road traffic injuries, and, if action is not taken to reverse the trend, this death toll is projected to triple by 2030. Vietnam has one of the highest road traffic death rates in the Western Pacific Region, and, according to the United States Department of State Crime and Safety Report, two of the most dangerous activities in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam are daily, unavoidable occurrences: crossing the street and driving or riding in traffic.

The United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly designated 2011-2020 as the Decade of Action for Road Safety, and chose Vietnam as one of its focus countries.  The U.N. Resident Coordinator in Vietnam has released a country-level request for proposals to award a one-time grant for seed funding for a social enterprise with a creative and measurable intervention that could have a significant impact on the issue of road traffic safety in HCMC. U.N. partners, including emergency medical responders, social entrepreneurs, and civil engineers from HCMC will convene to hear the enterprise pitches, review the recommendations, and ultimately select the most feasible proposal to provide start up funds to one group’s business.

Drawing upon your team’s research and expertise, your task is to develop a business plan for a social enterprise that will address one or more aspects of road traffic safety.  Your pitch should be based on the needs you identify in HCMC, but have potential to be scaled to other urban areas in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.  Your group will have up to $3 million USD in seed funding, which can be spent over a period of four years. Your plan must demonstrate self-sustainability after the four years.  

To download the entire 2014 Case Document, click here.

The Winning Team

Jiun-Ruey Hu, M.D. candidate, 2017

Ir ène Mathieu, M.D. candidate, 2015

Elizabeth Murphy, M.P.H. candidate (Global Health), 2014

Hemant Nelaparthi, MBA candidate, 2014

Ellen Page, MBA candidate, 2015

Saad Tamman, M.A. candidate (Economic Development), 2014

Participants

Judges

Douglas Heimburger, M.D.,   M.S.,  is a Professor of Medicine and Associate Director for Education and Training in the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH). He is board certified in internal medicine and clinical nutrition, and uses these specializations in the global health arena to research nutritional influences on responses to HIV/AIDS treatment and HIV education in developing countries. Through a Fulbright Scholar award-supported sabbatical in Zambia in 2006-07, he began his ongoing nutrition research in a population of Zambians starting antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS.

Martha Jones, Ph.D., M.P.A.,  is an Associate Professor at Vanderbilt's Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. She specializes in Applied Economics, Public Finance, and demographic factors such as workers' compensation and disability. As an economist, Dr. Jones has done research at the Federal Reserve Bank and for the State of California. She has educated students at international locations like Geneva and Lausanne Switzerland, and has held a number of professorial occupations in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

Amina Merchant, M.D., is a Global Health Trauma and Critical Care Surgery Fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She grew up in Chicago and completed medical school at the University of Illinois College of Medicine and her general surgery residency at Rush University. She has worked with NGOs in policy development and research in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India to reduce the global trauma burden through community-based interventions.

Troy Moon, M.D., M.P.H.,  is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH). He did his residency training at Tulane/Ocshner Clinic Foundation, and subsequently completed Pediatric Infectious Disease sub-specialty training at Tulane/LSU in New Orleans. He remains board certified in Pediatrics, and recently served 6 years as the Clinical Director with the VIGH partner non-governmental organization Friends in Global Health based in Zambézia, Mozambique, overseeing an HIV care and treatment scale-up program. He currently maintains engagement in activities in Mozambique and serves as Principal Investigator on a large community health development project. Dr. Moon also co-directs the Foundations in Global Health course within the Vanderbilt MPH program and has taught in global health settings at the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique through mentoring and collaborating with students and faculty alike in their medical and public health departments.

Jim Schorr, M.B.A.,

Roger Sweis, M.B.A.,   is the Founder and CEO of the Wheelhouse Project. He received his M.B.A.from The University of Chicago's Booth Business School. After a decade of documented work in social enterprise, Sweis recently relocated to Nashville to launch his tech-transfer model, The Wheelhouse Project. The project, dedicated to bringing multiple sectors together for social impact in the areas of Global Health and Education, is a unique assimilation of Sweis’ entrepreneurial skills and personal passion to see traditional venture business models retooled for use in addressing socio-economic and cultural epidemics.

Chay Sengkhounmany,   J.D.,  is an attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands. She is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University and a 2003 graduate of Georgia State University College of Law. She has worked for the Immigrant Legal Clinic of the Tennessee Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. She staffs the Medical Legal Partnership for Children, a collaboration between Legal Aid and the Monroe Carell, Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, and visits the Vanderbilt medical student-run Shade Tree clinic three times a month.

Sten Vermund, M.D., Ph.D.,   is the Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health, Amos Christie Chair in Global Health, and Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, Preventive Medicine, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He has led international HIV care, treatment and prevention projects in several countries, and spearheaded efforts to ease the burden of tropical and childhood diseases through research and teaching in low and middle income countries. He served as principal investigator (PI) of the international HIV Prevention Trials Network from 2006 to 2012, and is currently PI of the NIH/Fogarty Global Health Fellows Program. He has founded two organizations providing access to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment services to people living with HIV in Africa: the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia and Friends in Global Health, LLC.

Vermund received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his pediatric internship and residency, as well as fellowship in epidemiology, at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He also earned a master's degree in science at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a diploma in Public Health from the Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene in London, and a doctoral degree in epidemiology from Columbia University in New York. As a recent example of one of many accolades merited by his career, in 2013 he won the Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence in Global Health from the Global Health Education Consortium.

Bahr Weiss, Ph.D.,  is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Peabody College, a Visiting Foreign Professor at Vietnam National University, and a Senior Fellow at the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health. He and his research team are funded by NIH and have been working together in Vietnam since 2001. His team currently has five active NIH grants being implemented in Vietnam and he serves as the U.S. Site Director for sites in Vietnam for the VECD (Vanderbilt-Emory-Cornell-Duke Consortium) Fogarty Global Health Fellowships. His main research interests are assessment and factors predictive of the efficacy of child psychotherapy under non-research conditions; development of psychological interventions for non-Western populations; and comorbidity in child psychopathology.

Ben Tran, Ph.D.,   is an Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and English in the College of Arts and Science. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His research and teaching emphasizes modern Vietnamese literature and culture, twentieth-century Southeast Asian literature, postcolonial studies, colonial modernity, and translation studies. He has published articles in a variety of these topical areas and in several different journals such as the The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms, positions: Asia Critique, and PMLA. His current book project, Post-Mandarin: Masculinity and Aesthetic Modernity in Colonial Vietnam, examines how the radical 1919 displacement of the 1000-year-old Chinese-influenced mandarinal system by a French baccalaureate curriculum created the conditions for modern Vietnamese literature.

Sponsors

The VIGH Student Advisory Committee is grateful for the generous support of the many Sponsors of the 2014 Global Health Case Competition, without whom, the Case Competition would not have been possible.

Case Competition Committee and Volunteers