UMN Students Propose Community-Oriented Solutions to Mitigate PM 2.5 in Case Competition
The UMN winning case competition team, from left: Lily Curlin, Ishika Jain, Marie Ronnander, Khidhr Kotaria and Devna Panda
It’s highly unlikely that a university student would be given the reins to a government-run health agency along with a $1.5 million budget. But in the Global Health Case Competition, this kind of scenario is commonplace.
Of course, the students don’t actually take leadership positions at public health institutions — and they’re not given millions of dollars to do so. But during the competition, they do use their interprofessional skills to solve consequential global health problems.
Each case requires them to think like health professionals and work out the details necessary to untangle complex issues like pandemic preparedness, climate change or maternal mortality.
The Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility’s Global Health Case Competition is open to University of Minnesota graduate and professional students in addition to upper-level undergraduate students. Winning teams win a $3,000 cash prize while second-place teams receive $1,000.
The 2025 Global Health Case Competition focused on PM 2.5 air pollution in Thailand. PM 2.5 refers to tiny particles of air pollution that pose health risks like asthma and other chronic respiratory conditions. Data from UNICEF and the Health Effects Institute states air pollution caused 700,000 deaths among children under five in 2021.
In Thailand, slash and burn farming is a common practice, and a major contributor to PM 2.5.
CGHSR worked with faculty from Chiang Mai University to develop the case.
Surat Hongsibsong, PhD, an assistant professor and head of environment and health research at CMU’s Research Institute of Health Sciences and Anurak Wongta, PhD, an assistant professor at CMU’s Research Institute of Health Sciences both helped to write the case and served as judges for this year’s competition.
"Quite often, higher education has been accused of being too insular from actual happenings in the world. One of the beauties of the Case Competition is that it tries to replicate real world situations when you'll be working across disciplines, across sectors, and across countries," said Shailey Prasad, MD, MPH, executive director of CGHSR.
"So in many ways, this is probably the best pedagogical model of application of the knowledge we all learn in our own individual disciplines."
This year’s competition asked students to create a feasible solution to the problem of PM 2.5 in Thailand. The winning team — made up of University of Minnesota undergraduates — developed a three-pronged approach: “adapt, innovate and reduce.”
The team was made up of Lily Curlin (College of Liberal Arts), Ishika Jain (College of Science and Engineering), Khidhr Kotaria (College of Science and Engineering), Devna Panda (College of Science and Engineering), and Marie Ronnander (College of Biological Sciences). The team was coached by Tami Alpaugh, PhD, assistant professor of Medical Laboratory Sciences in the College of Pharmacy.
Competition judges included professors and researchers from both UMN and CMU. Case competition coaches included UMN faculty, PhD students and alumni.
The team developed a plan that included community education, renewable energy solutions and collaboration with a local university to better track controlled burns.
“We all brought a very different perspective. Our different academic disciplines taught us how to solve different problems in slightly different ways, and it provided us with a much broader approach,” said Curlin.
Jain mentioned that the case details are pertinent to health care in Minnesota, too, noting that there’s work being done in the legislature to increase the number of community health workers. The team’s case incorporated community health workers to provide information related to PM 2.5 and air quality.
“This is something that’s very applicable in Minnesota,” said Jain. “And having an interdisciplinary team was really important, because the problems we’ll be working on in the future are not going to be one-sided.”
Kotaria explained that the nuances and complexities of the case forced the team to think about solutions that would work for everyone, including farmers in Thailand, while deferring to local communities.
“We tried to balance the cultural sensitivity of not having farmers in rural areas completely stop controlled burns, as that’s something that’s become very normalized. We tried to provide education and alternative methods,” he said. “Part of our solution was very community focused, and we used alternative ways to manage waste from agriculture.”
The students said the experience was a helpful way to solve pertinent problems in a way that simulates the work they’ll do after they graduate.
“One of the best parts of this experience was being able to apply some of my educational experience to a real-world problem and develop a solution that’s feasible for the real world,” said Panda.
“A lot of times in science and engineering classes, it can feel like you’re bogged down in concepts that don’t necessarily feel applicable to the real world, which is why this experience was so exciting for me.”
In addition to giving cash prizes to the first- and second-place teams, CGHSR sponsors the winning team’s trip to the international competition at Emory University in Atlanta, where this year’s winning team competed against other first-place teams from more than 30 universities from across six continents.
The Emory Morningside Global Health Case Competition took place March 20–29, 2025.
Applications for the Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility’s Global Health Case Competition open in the fall. Learn more about the competition.