The Tulane Health Policy Case Competition gives teams of undergraduate students an opportunity to apply their talents and knowledge to put together a solution to a given health policy program. Students will have an opportunity to interact with school faculty in the course of constructing their solutions. Top teams will present their solutions to a panel of experts for detailed feedback.
Case Prompt
This case asks teams of undergraduate students to apply the lens of health policy analysis to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Vaccinations rates have been lagging, especially in southern rural areas. This scenario imagines that you have been tasked by the state government of Louisiana to develop a package of policy proposals to increase vaccination uptake among hesitant populations. In this scenario, state government has set aside $20 million of the federal Coronavirus Relief Funds (CRF) to address hesitancy through your proposals. A good policy will leverage existing state infrastructure as appropriate and include detailed breakdowns of the costs of the policy package.
2021 Competition Results
Eighty-three participants in 34 teams participated in the 2021 TUHPCC. Our thanks to teams from the 15 universities below for participating! Finalist teams were from the University of Illinois, Cornell University, and the University of Notre Dame. Our congratulations to Peter Halloran, Hyeyun Lee, and Karen Tanious from the University of Notre Dame for their winning proposal to boost vaccination rates with a system of incentives for peer referrals to vaccination sites.
The winning team's slides can be found here.
Participating universities:
- Claflin University
- Cornell University
- Delaware State University
- Emory University
- Harvard University
- Indira Gandhi National Open University
- Northwestern University
- Syracuse University
- Tulane University
- University of Illinois
- University of Miami
- University of Notre Dame
- University of Pennsylvania
- Vanderbilt University
- Xavier University of Louisiana
2021 Judges
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Libby Alexander is a seasoned healthcare executive who served as CEO for a major healthcare payment systems company. Under her tenure the company’s clients included most of the largest health insurers and retail corporations in the US. She has experience in management of value based healthcare performance, healthcare analytics, and multiple technology applications in healthcare management. | |
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Nancy Messonnier was director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2016-2021. During that time Dr. Messonnier helped lead the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Messonnier was one of the first leaders in federal government to publicly acknowledge the severity of the impending contagion. Dr. Messonnier served at CDC in various capacities for 26 years. Dr. Messonnier currently serves as Executive Director for Pandemic Prevention and Health Systems at the Skoll Foundation. | |
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Martha Whyte is the director Health Region 7 for the Louisiana Department of Health. Region 7, in Louisiana’s northwest, has experienced low vaccination rates, high virus transmission numbers, and persistent distribution of misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine. Dr. White is a pediatrician who has served as health director for 20 years. | |
