Third-year Pharm.D. student Christine Ko will represent the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in the CLARION interprofessional health care case competition.
Ko is a member of UNC’s four-person interdisciplinary team, which also includes Natalie Browne, of the Gillings School of Global Public Health; Uzma Khan, of the Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling program at the School of Medicine; and Monica Kim, of the School of Dentistry.
The competition is held at the University of Minnesota in April. It is organized by CLARION, a University of Minnesota student organization dedicated to improving health care through interprofessional collaboration.
Student teams, consisting of four students representing at least two disciplines, are given a case and are charged with creating a root cause analysis. The team presents their analysis to a panel of interprofessional judges that evaluates their analysis in the context of real world standards of practice.
Ko is currently conducting research with Stefanie Ferreri, Pharm.D., through the Research and Scholarship in Pharmacy Program, studying interprofessional communication between primary care providers and community pharmacists.
Outside of coursework, she is also involved in the Office of Interprofessional Education & Practice, the Student Senate Interprofessional Education Committee, the Recruitment Ambassadors Program, SHAC and CAPS.
Although Ko has not participated in an event like CLARION before, she said she is excited to compete due to her passion for interprofessional collaboration.
“Through my extracurricular experiences and research, I’ve learned about the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration within the healthcare setting,” Ko said. “I believe my team and I will be able to achieve a 360-degree perspective on our current healthcare system in order to represent UNC and propose an innovative healthcare solution at the competition in April.”
The competition will also represent a homecoming for Ko, who grew up in Minnesota before coming to UNC-Chapel Hill as an undergraduate.