Three students in professor Eva Dziadula's Health Economics class, cross-listed with the Health Humanities and Society minor, won first prize at Tulane's 2021 Health Policy Case competition. The competition is held annually by Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Hyeyun (Erica) Lee, Karen Tanious, and Peter Halloran put together a comprehensive proposal for increasing Covid-19 vaccination rates in Louisiana. They presented their proposal in a live Zoom final of the competition to a panel of judges and their unique approach with a system of incentives for peer referrals to vaccination sites won them each a $1,000 cash prize and a $10,000 scholarship to Tulane's master's program. They competed against teams from Harvard, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Illinois, and Northwestern, among others. The proposal carefully considered the documented disparities in health, lack of access to transportation, and basic care by many residents in Louisiana. Their solutions addressed issues of mistrust in the healthcare system by communities of color and proposed the use of celebrities such as Drew Brees to promote vaccinations, tickets to Saints' games, as well as paid time off.