UMSSW Student Diana Campbell Leads UMB Team to Prize at National Public Health Case Challenge.
MSW student Diana Campbell captained a University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) interprofessional team that earned the Wildcard Prize — and $1,800 — at the 2026 D.C. Public Health Case Challenge, hosted by the National Academy of Medicine on October 16.
The team's proposal, BLOOM ("Belonging, Life Skills, Optimism, and Optimal Mental Health"), was an education, socialization, and outreach program addressing the mental health, social, and reproductive health needs of D.C. teens with autism spectrum disorder. Judges were impressed by the solution's innovative nature, its target population, and the educational topics it addressed.
Campbell, who is also an MPH candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, led teammates from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Law, and Graduate Studies in responding to this year's case on preventing the multimorbidity of mental and physical chronic disease among D.C. residents.
The competition, which drew teams from universities across the region, was won overall by Howard University.
Congratulations to Diana and the entire UMB team — a great example of how social work students bring essential perspective to interprofessional collaboration and raise the school’s profile across campus.