Preventive Health Challenge: Redefining Real-Life Problems with Transdisciplinary Solutions

Are you ready to take on a challenge that will push you to your limits and help you develop skills that will benefit you throughout your academic and professional careers? We invite you to participate in the Preventive Health Challenge, a trans-disciplinary course that will challenge you to analyze real-life problems and design innovative solutions that can make a difference in the world of health promotion.

This course is not for the faint of heart - you will need to have disciplinary knowledge in your field of study, as well as excellent information and computer literacy skills, and English verbal and writing skills at a high level. If you are up for the challenge, you will be rewarded with the opportunity to work with a team of like-minded students from different disciplines, as well as external stakeholders, to develop solutions that can make a real impact.

Throughout the course, you will be supported by a dedicated team of coaches and mentors, who will help you develop your skills and guide you through the process of designing and validating your solutions. And at the end of the course, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have contributed to a meaningful project that can make a real difference in the world.

So if you're ready to take on a challenge that will help you develop your skills, expand your horizons, and make a real impact, we encourage you to sign up for the Preventive Health Challenge today!

The Preventive Health Challenge course invites 3rd year BSc and MSc students from TU Eindhoven, Wageningen University & Research, University of Utrecht and UMC Utrecht to propose solutions to real-life problems related to health promotion and disease prevention, using a trans-disciplinary approach that combines various fields of expertise. The course aims to help students develop skills in problem-solving, analysis, and communication, and encourages them to gather and analyze information from different disciplines and integrate it into their projects.

The question for this challenge is: How can we use innovative technology, communication and design to promote preventive health practices and reduce the risk of chronic diseases in a specific area in The Netherlands?

In working on this challenge, students are stimulated to employ a trans-disciplinary approach. Solutions could combine communicational, architectural/build environment, green environment, food environment, Artificial Intelligence, political, economic, (public) health, nutrition, social and sustainability disciplines. The proposed solutions could take the form of a prototype (e.g. of a device, a platform, a tool), a system or a policy, depending on the expertise of the students and their chosen direction. In a period of 8 weeks students will be challenged to redefine this broad challenge to a more specific problem definition, propose a solution to this problem and validate their proposal.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Analyze the context of a real-life problem and distinguish the most relevant elements for designing a solution
• Assess opportunities offered from different disciplines on the existing state-of-the-art technologies, methods and solutions and identify areas for innovation, relevant for solving a real-life challenge
• Gathering, selecting and analyzing information, tools and techniques from different disciplines and integrating this into final project deliverables in terms of process and content at an academic level
• Discuss and defend their viewpoints and conclusions in a professional and academically correct way
• Set and reflect on personal learning goals based on their expertise and that of other members and stakeholders, in a cyclic manner leading to future reflections and actions

Assumed Knowledge:
You have at least completed the first 2 years of your BSc (120 ECTs).

https://wur.osiris-student.nl/onderwijscatalogus/extern/cursus?cursusid=820779&taal=en