Two Eastern students were awarded second place in the American Association of Health Education Case Study Competition in San Diego.

Emily Schumacher, a senior health studies major, and Megan Flynn, a senior health studies major, gave a 12-minute presentation about implementing a hypothetical program for a specific health issue scenario.

“The purpose of the competition was to create a program that would reduce health risk related incidents, but also it was to see how well we could put together a program in such a short amount of time,” Flynn said.

Flynn said they were the only two-person team at the competition and the other seven universities each had three people per team.

Schumacher said they received their case study topic two weeks before the competition.

“Our case was skin cancer and melanoma and they chose a focus group which was San Louis Obispo in California,” Schumacher said. “Then we had to research the county and find out what is going on there like what their lifestyle is, what their attitude is and then we developed a program that would be specifically tailored to that county.”

Schumacher said the direction they took for the program was two-fold.

“Our first part was in schools to start changing policies in like mandating that they wear hats and sunglasses out at recess, that there would be sunscreen dispensers around the school like we do with hand sanitizer and the school would have to put shading structures on the playground,” Schumacher said.

Schumacher said the second part of the program was geared toward athletics such as having soccer players wear long-sleeve jerseys and to have a skin care fare for spectators including umbrella stands, sunscreen dispensers, and hat and sunglasses vendors.

“Together we combined our different skills,” Flynn said.

Schumacher and Flynn were in San Diego from March 29 to April 2 and they found out they won second place on April 1.

“Our program would be the key to action to get people to realize the seriousness of the situation because that area has the highest cancer rate in the nation,” Schumacher said.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or rjrodgers@eiu.edu