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MHA students deliver award-winning presentation in Case Competition

Emily Lenneville, Avi Handa and Christine Laccay focused on the sensitive and difficult nature of palliative care to place second in the 8th annual University of Alabama Health Administration Case Competition.

The Bloomberg School team competed against more than 200 grad students from 35 public health school teams from all over the U.S. and Canada, putting education into practice with real-life, real-time cases. A panel of 12 nationally recognized health administration professional judges awarded the Bloomberg School team a cash prize of $6,000.

“We provided a business and implementation plan for a palliative care program expansion like the case asked,” Handa explains, “but the focus of our team’s approach was providing patients and their families peace of mind and comfort during a serious illness and potentially their last days of life.”

Acknowledging that “patient-centered care” can be a bit of a buzzword these days, the team prioritized both the patients' and families' needs in their case.

“Because of the way in which the Bloomberg School’s Master of Health Administration program prepared us, the three of us had already developed a work process and established a positive team dynamic,” says Laccay.

A key strategy: “We were able to play to each other’s strengths,” she reveals.

Success meant differentiating themselves, according to Lenneville. “(We) wanted our work to reflect our values, so our analysis emphasized the people, and our presentation told a story,” she says.  “We were taking a risk, but it was that risk that distinguished our group from the rest.”

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