American Mock World Health Organization aims to give students health policy experience

UNC’s American Mock World Health Organization held its first regional summit on Saturday, condensing its previous three-day conference structure into one day. 

AMWHO is similar to organizations like Model United Nations and Model U.S. Congress, but mimics the World Health Organization. High school and college students from all over the state act as delegates for different countries. They divide up into regional committees to draft a resolution regarding a specified topic — this year’s topic was infectious diseases. At the end of the day, all the delegates come together and see what the other regions have done. 

UNC sophomore Nishita Sheth, executive conference co-director of UNC AMWHO, said the whole point of AMWHO is for students to not only be exposed to public health, but also to try their own hand at creating health policy. 

“It’s exciting to get students to learn about the field of public health starting very early,” Sheth said. “Not only learn about it, but have this hands-on relationship with public health.”

During the resolution drafting process, which takes up most of the day, the students are encouraged to be demanding in their country’s expectations and desires for the resolution.

UNC sophomore Chris Lurie, executive conference co-director of UNC AMWHO, told the delegates to embrace conflicts and look out for their countries’ best interests. 

“In the real WHO, it’s not happy-go-lucky,” Lurie said.

AMWHO began at UNC in 2014 and has spread to other universities in North Carolina as well. While any of the universities can host a regional conference or summit, the annual national conference rotates between the schools, coming to UNC every five years.

UNC AMWHO previously held a three-day conference, but abandoned that structure for the summit to make AMWHO more accessible and affordable for students.

People don’t really have three days to spend learning about public health, and the cost for a three-day conference is much more than the cost of a one-day summit, Sheth said.

“We’re trying to still have that immersive experience in public health, but one that can be easily accessible because it would take up less time and also easily affordable, because we don’t have to charge people as much,” she said.

UNC junior Nupur Jain, co-president of UNC AMWHO, said interest in the organization has increased since changing its structure. 

“There’s a lot of people coming from other schools in North Carolina, and we actually have a good amount of high schoolers as well,” she said. “So it’s really great that we’re going to have high schoolers, undergrads and grad students at the summit.”

Isatta Feika, a junior at UNC who attended the summit, said she has a strong interest in global public health and believes that innovations in the field need to happen. 

“I’m really excited to be around other people that have the same consciousness and that want to make a change,” Feika said. “I want to have this foundation in knowing what the WHO is like in order to actually go into that or other fields.”

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