Students in Washington participate in inaugural year of Be the Change global health competition

Across Washington state, hundreds of students have proposed their ideas to improve global health in the 2012 Be the Change global health competition. Stretching from Bellingham to Vancouver and Pullman to Seattle, over 250 students are participating in the inaugural year of the contest.

Be the Change invites high school, community college and undergraduate students to create solutions, awareness, and innovation in global health through programmatic tools or heightening public engagement. Teams of three or more students were asked to select a specific global health issue and submit their ideas to solve or alleviate this problem.

Projects range from designing a portable, solar-powered waste water treatment system for low-resource settings to hosting a global health symposium for high school peers to constructing a mobile phone application bringing medical knowledge into the hands of the world’s poorest.

Each finalist team will be paired with a global health expert to advise them through planning or execution of their idea. In addition, finalist teams will have the opportunity to visit Washington’s top-notch organizations working in global health and visit with their executives, including PATH, Seattle BioMed, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Vision, Seattle Children’s and more.

In April, Washington’s top global health experts will select the winners based on feasibility, innovation and likely impact. In addition to $10,000 in cash prizes, winning student teams will be recognized in a public awards ceremony at McCaw Hall in July’s Global Health Month as part of the Next Fifty.

Sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Allen Institute for Brain Science, Be the Change student competition is part of Global Health Nexus, an initiative of the Washington Global Health Alliance.