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Fulbright Scholar leads team to top honor
May 31, 2011
Editor's Note: Naveed Sadiq, who is pursuing a doctoral degree in the Arnold School's Department of Health Services Policy and Management, recently led a team that won First Place in a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. In the following article, he discusses his experience.
The Fulbright Seminar was arranged by the U.S. Department of State and held in Boston on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The title of the seminar was "Lab to Market." The organizers arranged a group competition among six teams for a case study. The team members were Fulbright students from all over the world, and all of us were studying at different U.S. universities, including the Harvard School of Public Health, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Emory University, Cornell University, Columbia University, Ohio State University, University of Southern California, among others. Only one team would win the competition.
My team got the case study for a cholera outbreak in a remote cave-dwelling tribe living on an island "Palawanon," where 19 people ead died and more than 500 were sick. The epidemic affected 17 of 22 villages. About 40,000 people spoke different dialects and lived in isolated communities. The island had no portable water system, no toilets, and no hospital in the area. Preliminary samples from rivers found that the water was contaminated with feces. Worsening the problem: local laterite mining had significantly contributed to water pollution in the region.
My team consisted of members from John Hopkins, the University of South Florida, Kansas State University, Kentucky State University, Georgia Tech, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois, Florida Atlantic University, North Dakota State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Washington.
We were to focus on treatment and prevention of communicable diseases and to write a hypothetical proposal for funding from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A grant of $700,00 from the foundation would fund a pilot project to discover an innovative and sustainable technological initiative to prevent and/or treat this and future cholera outbreaks in the region.
As the case scenario was presented, Dr. Michael Byrd's lesson on the landmark John Snow cholera case, presented in HSPM J711, came to my mind. A 2009 article in the journal Social Science & Medicine, which we studied, found that "few cases in the history of epidemiology and public health are more famous, or more cited, than John Snow's investigation of a neighborhood cholera outbreak in the St. James, Westminster, area of London in 1854."
To prepare and advocate the case effectively and to make a presentation for the proposal, I drew on my experiences from HSPM 846, a course taught by Dr. Dave Murday. This class helped me successfully prepare my case. We addressed the problem by presenting short- and long-term plans. The short-term plan included the establishment of a cholera center, provision of chlorine tablets for disinfection of drinking water or using transparent, PET/glass bottles for disinfection of drinking water from sunlight. The plan also called for the training of municipal workers to communicate with the tribe leaders and the local communities about the need for hand hygiene, thorough washing of fruits and vegetables and the provision of portable toilets by digging a crater for feces. The craters ultimately would be filled with soil and trees planted.
The long-term plan consisted of dividing the island into three zones: In one zone, hand pumps for ground water would be provided. In the second zone, chlorination of water would be done. And, in the last zone, algae and sunlight disinfection would be used. The three methods would be evaluated to determine the best one to meet the needs of the community, and one technique would then be implemented.
We were asked how we would know if our strategies were working effectively and why we intended to use solar light for disinfection. Our answers: A reduction in the number of new cholera cases would indicate the effectiveness of our strategies; the use of solar light is sustainable and easy for people.
On the basis of all above, our team was awarded first place among the six teams, and we received certificates from the Department of State. The panel judges were from the Harvard School of Public Health.
I am really grateful to the Arnold School of Public Health at USC for providing me with the quality education that prepared me for this competition. This is not my award performance but the award performance of the school!
