Inspired by the Special Olympics World Games which took place in the UAE’s capital in March 2019, NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) hosted its sixth annual Public Health Think Tank (PHTT) conference, with the aim of tackling challenges faced by young people of determination in the UAE.
Team Ajman won first place at PHTT 2019 for their proposal Sawa|Together, an application with a built-in buddy system, which connects students of determination with student assistants. By choosing between immediate, emergency and weekly assistance, the app encourages more students of determination to attend university classes, creating a more diverse student body and less worry for parents. Members of the winning team included NYUAD students Hayoung Song from and Mueez Hasan; Dubai Medical College student Rafya Ahmed, and Abu Dhabi University’s Zainab Salim.
Hayoung Song from Team Ajman said: “Coming into the conference, we all had different cultural and educational backgrounds and majors. Throughout the time we spent together, we got to know each other and how our interests collided; just like public health is a holistic view, we collaborated across our differences to develop an intervention. The conference provided us with a space to come together, hear different ideas, and reflect our empathy in a practical manner.”
The two-day conference brought together almost 50 skilled undergraduate students from different universities across the UAE, including 25 NYUAD students, to plan an innovative public health intervention.
The conference included a workshop by the UAE Special Olympics, which raised awareness for people of determination while the Special Olympics continuing active role in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities.
The students split into teams and worked collaboratively to develop a proposal for a public health intervention. The proposals were then presented to a panel of judges with the winning team’s proposal to be implemented and submitted to local public health authorities for official review, with full support from the Public Health Research Center at NYUAD.
Team Umm al-Quwain won Honorable Mention at PHTT 2019 for their Crafting Trust Training Program, which aims to strengthen the relationship between people of determination and health providers through a 14-week essential training program provided to medical students.
Keynote speakers at the conference included Dean of the Faculty of Education at the British University in Dubai Eman Gaad; Assistant Director for Tobacco Research at NYUAD Andrea Leinberger-Jabari; Producer and Associate Instructor of Music in the Division of Arts and Humanities at NYUAD Thaddeus Stegall; Adelphi University and Adjunct at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development Stephen Shore; and Professor and Associate Chair of Anthropology at NYU Rayna Rapp.
The student-led conference was organized by NYUAD’s PHTT 2019’s core team – co-led by Hafsa Ahmed and Kai-Wen Yang, both seniors at the University. Andrea Leinberger-Jabari, who is an NYUAD-affiliated public health professional, supported the conference as an advisor.
PHTT, which is hosted annually at NYUAD, aspires to become a platform for public health innovation in the UAE and the region, by addressing new health topics every year. The conference previously covered issues such as obesity in adolescents, road traffic incidents, oral and dental health, and cardiovascular diseases.
For more information about PHTT, and this year’s proposals, please click here.
