The Critical Challenge Project (CCP) is central to the learning experience and will become the focus of an independent study. You will identify a challenge related to your field and interests, drawing from your own experience and vision for the future. Each student works collaboratively with their peers, professional colleagues, course faculty and advisors, integrating various perspectives across healthcare sectors into the project.

The CCP challenges you to move beyond your own sector and develop solutions that account for the full complexity of the healthcare system — integrating business, policy and healthcare factors across care delivery, payer, pharma, health tech and government. Projects must consider ethical implications and have practical applicability, with viable solutions that reflect the realities of a multi-stakeholder system.

Key principles students use to define their CCPs include:

• Relevant: Meaningful to the student in terms of background, interests, current job, future aspirations, and/or organization
• Consequential: Project is broad enough scope to have an impact on stakeholders across the healthcare industry, including patients, providers, and payers
• Realistic: Feasible and viable set of steps and expectations within the 12-month program (the overarching challenge does not need to be resolved within the program, but measurable progress toward the defined CCP must be reasonable and appropriate)
• Measurable: Contains measurable outcomes of success

• The Use of Telemedicine to Increase Access to Healthcare for the Residents of the Bahamas Out-Islands
• Utilizing Critical Access Hospital Infrastructure to Provide Opioid Use Disorder Services to Rural Communities
• A Proposed Alternative Care Model to Reduce Unnecessary Emergency Department Utilization in an Elderly Medicare Advantage Population
• Homelessness and Stabilization Unit Stays: Analyzing Current Discharge Planning Processes

View Critical Challenge Project Examples  

• Established a global network to efficiently distribute lifesaving blood products by digitally connecting millions of blood donors with patients in need.
• Developed vision neuroscience digital biomarkers to enable communication and early detection services for patients unable to speak due to mental health conditions or strokes.
• Drafted and successfully passed legislation to eliminate unfair trade practices in the purchase of specialty pharmaceuticals.
• Redesigned the architectural planning process for healthcare facilities and physical buildings to better align with the evolving needs of modern healthcare systems.