‘We need multidimensional perspectives’: UNB Connect the Thoughts competition motivates students to solve health care issues

Established in 2020, Connect the Thoughts (CTT) is a student-led competition at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) that invites students to think critically about current issues in New Brunswick’s health care systems.

The competition revolves around a fictional health care “case” about an individual facing barriers to care in New Brunswick’s health care system. Student teams then collaborate for eight days to learn about the case and devise solutions for the issues it showcases. At the end of the competition, these solutions are presented to judges. Student winners receive a monetary prize, and all student solutions are posted on the CTT website.

This year, CTT’s health care case is about geriatrics and long-term care. Hala Nasir, a fifth-year biology student and co-chair for CTT, says this topic was driven by student experiences in the CTT organizing team.

“We have some members in our executive team who work in nursing homes and who work in the hospital, and that influences the kinds of topics that we end up choosing,” says Nasir. “(Coming up with topics) is a collaborative process and it’s things that we have experienced and noticed within our community.”

CTT’s process for officializing their health care case is rigorous. After CTT members discuss ideas for topics, they send pitches to reviewers who provide CTT with feedback on the cases. This process continues until a case is deemed realistic, relevant, and interdisciplinary. The final product is a “human story” about an individual and their experience with the health care system.

“We sort of fabricate a fake patient and we follow them through their journey within the health care system,” says Andy Jin, a fourth-year biology chemistry student and co-chair for CTT. “The criticism process is quite elaborate. Realism is one thing; another thing is whether (the case) reflects the issue we are trying to solve.”

Sarah Balcom, an assistant professor of nursing at UNB, helped with the review process. Past cases involved a newcomer to Canada who was unable to access culturally sensitive care; a university-aged person who was unable to access mental health support; and a man who was unable to access support for a substance misuse disorder.

“The cases are issues that we have within the province, so the solutions would be of interest to a lot of decision makers in the province,” says Balcom. “(We gauge whether a case) is going to be something that’s truly interdisciplinary such that anyone in the competition can approach it, if it is something that’s particular to New Brunswick, if it is in the media a lot lately.”

To take part in the competition, students fill out an application form with questions probing students’ creativity and problem-solving skills. CTT also strives to unite students from different disciplines in the competition, and hopes to invite UNB-Saint John and St. Thomas University students in future.

“I think having people from different disciplines really breaks the potential of an echo-chamber that might occur with just STEM students or just arts students,” says Jin. “(We want) that ideologies challenge each other.”

The eight days of the competition span team-building exercises, training sessions about the healthcare case, brainstorming ideas about solutions, and presenting solutions to judges. Last year, when the competition topic was the opioid crisis, training sessions involved a hands-on component that taught students to administer naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdose. Throughout the competition, student teams are aided by mentors who help students develop ideas and collaborate.

After each team presents their solutions, judges discuss the solutions with students and pick a winning team. Last year, the judges were Horizon Health director Emily Bodechon, Sophia Recovery Center director Sam Flewelling, nursing professor Tracey Rickards, and Jules Maitland, director of non-profit partner All In.

Each team also makes posters that are hung in the Wu Conference Centre. In future, CTT hopes to open the poster session to all community members. This might enrich local understanding of healthcare and spark discussion with health care services.

“We are planning to work with health authorities such as Horizon and Vitalité,” says Jin. “We would really want to have these solutions looked at by them, and if they are good, then hopefully enacted.”

Nasir is optimistic that the interdisciplinary, dialogue-rich platform that CTT provides will advance the future of healthcare, equipping students with multidimensional perspectives about health care solutions.

“These health care issues that we’re dealing with are so complex and it’s always very multidimensional. We need multidimensional perspectives in order to tackle the issues,” says Nasir. “Being able to have a competition like this where we’re able to provide students with this platform to really showcase their problem-solving skills and hone those skills in terms of critical thinking and creativity – it’s just going to progress the future of our health care system in New Brunswick.”

Balcom believes that there is a desire to engage in more interdisciplinary dialogue, but that some decisions about health care need to be made urgently and may not allow much deliberation.

“I think dialogue is happening, but there’s always a balance. I think the challenges that we have in New Brunswick is balancing the need to make decisions and changes quickly, with making sure that everybody who should be consulted and should be involved in those solutions is able to be as involved as they’d like to be.”

Last year’s CTT competitors share their experience with CTT. The health care case, on the topic of opioid misuse and harm reduction, featured a man who was prescribed opioids for back pain and then experienced opioid addiction.

Yara Bayoumi, a recent psychology and classical studies graduate, describes her mental flow during the competition as “overwhelming but in a good way.” It was a dive into articles about opioid use, harm reduction, substance use, non-stigmatizing language, and gathering all the information into a narrative that addressed the case.

“The competition was one week of us discovering as much as we could and breaking down the case we were given,” says Bayoumi. “What could be done to fix every single problem along the way? To fix every single problem you had to do research on all the topics.”

Bayoumi’s team came up with solutions that included reducing the price of naloxone kits for accessibility, or encouraging people who struggle with addiction to use in groups to reduce the risk of overdose. Bayoumi shares that the experience helped her empathize with those with substance use disorders.

“Whenever I thought of substance use, I always thought that people who struggle with it are using it recreationally. But I realized that most people who start do take it because they need help, they need medication. And from there it just gets worse,” says Bayoumi. “I think that humanized people who struggle with substance use disorder for me. It made me see them more as people who are struggling with a problem than people who are causing the problem.”

Bayoumi believes that medical systems may rely too much on prescribing medication and could shift towards natural treatments. She shares that her mother suffers from migraines, and a doctor had prescribed her a painkiller that can cause addiction. Her mother chose to manage her migraines with physical therapy, lower dose pain medication, and lifestyle changes.

“I couldn’t stop thinking of my mother,” Bayoumi says of working on the case. “My mom could be like him – just an everyday person struggling with pain, and if you get given the wrong medication or dose, that’s a terrible thing. There’s no coming back from that. It goes back to the issue of doctors over-relying on medication rather than focusing on more natural treatments.”

Arnab Taranga, a third year sociology and criminology student, competed with a history and biology student. His team addressed social stigma surrounding opioid misuse by proposing town hall community events led by doctors, nurses, and politicians to increase awareness of opioid misuse and available support. To ensure financial sustainability, Taranga’s team sought to improve current healthcare systems instead of devising entirely new solutions.

“We were thinking of a solution that would be sustainable and also realistic,” says Taranga. “We can think of making more education in schools, hiring more doctors or nurses to treat folks and create specialized units – those are great solutions, but are they realistic in our current socioeconomic structure? That’s the question we asked, and the answer was no. There’s barely enough funding as it is in healthcare. So then we thought we should focus on the existing structure and how to work on that.”

Participating in CTT also encouraged Taranga to join naloxone advocacy movements. These Canada-wide movements strive to distribute free naloxone kits in the province.

“(Naloxone advocacy) is something I’ve been working on with folks on-campus and off-campus,” says Taranga. “I have to thank CTT for that because, before that, I didn’t even know that something like naloxone existed, but here I am, advocating for it now.”

Incé Husain is a neuroscience student and journalist who writes for the NB Media Co-op. She pursues local stories independently at The Unprecendented Times. She is based in London, Ontario.