Joy (Shuangqi) Wang (’16) Part of Winning Team in 2016 U of M Global Health Case Competition

Joint-degree candidate Joy (Shuangqi) Wang, who expects to receive both her J.D. and her M.P.H. in environmental health this May, is a member of a six-student team that recently won first place in the 2016 University of Minnesota Global Health Case Competition. The competition is conducted annually by the Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility, part of the University’s Academic Health Center, as a way of challenging interdisciplinary teams of students to make effective strategic recommendations for helping to alleviate real-world health problems. This year, the student teams were asked to develop sustainable interventions in the Syrian refugee crisis. Fourteen teams took part in the competition. Wang and her teammates proposed implementing a pilot program in Turkey and Lebanon to improve the security, health, and resilience of Syrian refugees through vocational training and access to conditional financial support.

At the Law School, Wang is president of the Amnesty International Legal Support Network, a student ambassador with the admissions office, and a research assistant with the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. She has been a staff member of Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice, a student instructor in the LL.M. Legal Writing and Skills Program, a legal extern for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, a summer associate at Norton Rose Fulbright in Minneapolis, and a student attorney and student director with the Law School’s Center for New Americans.

Wang’s health case competition teammates are Hiwote Bekele, J’Mag Karbeah, and Patrick Williams, students in the School of Public Health, and Besufekad Alemu and Kimani Cyrus Ndung’u from the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences. The team coach is Dr. Carolyn Porta from the School of Nursing. As the winners of the University’s competition, the group will travel to Atlanta in April to compete with teams from around the world in Emory University’s International Global Health Case Competition.