Student association develops interdisciplinary collaboration and leadership to solve global healthcare problems

By Eileen Hoftyzer

As a student in the Master of Biomedical Innovation (MBI) program, Shruti Cheetu knows the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration for solving challenging problems, in health care and beyond.

With her interest in global health, Cheetu wanted to increase opportunities for graduate students to build skills in leadership and collaboration outside of the classroom. She partnered with Ritika Khetarpal, a student in the Master of Science in Global Health program, to start a new McMaster student association – the Medical Innovation and Global Health Association (MIGH) – that would focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and leadership in health care.

“Our goal is to solve healthcare problems from multiple approaches to ensure that these solutions can actually be implemented,” says Cheetu. “In order to do that, we need to see the problem and potential solutions from multiple perspectives.”

In the fall of 2024, Cheetu and Khetarpal began recruiting interested students to the association and its board of directors. Currently, MIGH has seven other students on their board, representing the MBI, Master of Science in Global Health and Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs: Amal Qazi (Global Health), Omer Choudhry (MBI), Mikaela Morelli (MBI), Andres Bravo (MBI), Zahrah Khan (Global Health), Imran Visram (MBA) and Jashan Choong (MBA).

Each member brings different perspectives and experiences, but they share a common goal – to use their diverse skills to improve health care around the world.

“My motto is that the word team stands for ‘together everyone achieves more,’” says Khetarpal. “Global health is a very transdisciplinary field, and we work with different professionals around the world. I wanted to learn from people working in innovation and business, because all of these intersect beautifully.”

Since its launch, the MIGH board has been planning a number of initiatives for students to gain new experiences, perspectives and connections in a range of fields. They are planning monthly networking events and research rounds for students to hear about leading-edge research at McMaster and make connections with other students and faculty. They are also planning to launch a podcast featuring conversations between students and potential mentors, as well as developing a mentorship program that connects undergraduate and graduate students with academic and industry professionals.

“The group is committed to providing leadership opportunities for students and offering a variety of resources,” says Choudhry. “This is an opportunity to become involved with the health research ecosystem and find ways to take it to the next level.”

“I’m excited to see how students benefit from learning from our faculty – both about the research they do and also the soft skills from networking, which they can carry over into any future endeavors that they pursue,” says Bravo.

One of their key programs has been to provide students with opportunities to participate in case competitions in which teams are presented with a public health problem and given a limited amount of time to design a solution. They are planning to host their own case competition in the spring.

In September, they participated in a competition sponsored by Partners in Health Canada competition in which they needed to develop policies to address maternal and infant mortality in Sierra Leone. Their team came in second place.

Most recently, a team that included Khetarpal, Cheetu, Morelli, Choong, Bravo and Qazi placed first in the intramural case competition hosted by McMaster Global Health Office focused on improving health outcomes in Indigenous populations. Their solution focused on telehealth and mobile clinics developed in partnership with Inuit communities to provide culturally safe care. The team will now be representing McMaster in the Emory Morningside Global Health Case Competition in Atlanta in March.

The group says that their emphasis on multidisciplinary collaboration has been key to their success in the case competitions, as each team included members from different programs who could contribute different perspectives.

“There’s a huge benefit to having multidisciplinary teams because you’re all learning from each other,” says Morelli. “You’re also sharing resources, and everyone has different things to contribute, so it uplifts each of the programs.”

With its focus on interdisciplinary teams, MIGH’s members believe that collaboration is not just about learning but practising an essential skill for their future careers.

“If we want to innovate and make changes that actually addresses the problems people are currently facing, we can’t just look at them from a health lens. We have to look at everything from social determinants of health to infrastructure to politics,” says Qazi. “When we start working, we’ll need to collaborate with so many stakeholders, and being part of MIGH is a great way to practice. MIGH is doing a great job at taking the steps to give us experiences so we can improve those skills.”

The MBI program at the Marnix E. Heersink School of Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Master of Science in Global Health at the newly announced Mary Heersink School of Global Health and Social Medicine are both supported by a generous gift from Marnix and Mary Heersink.