Healthweeks have come and gone and UIMSAITES and UADSites alike are not unfamiliar with the many things a healthweek might carry in its rotund belly. This year’s healthweek is however a fusion of experiences and a two sided mosaic with UIMSA and UADS coming together to make it happen.
In this interview, UIMSA Press interviewed Ijezie Collins the current UIMSA VP and chairman of the healthweek committee on the inspiration, expectations and intricacies of this joint healthweek.
This year’s Health Week comes with an unexpected twist: a joint celebration between UIMSA and UADS. How did this collaboration come about and what does it mean for both associations?
The collaboration between UADS and UIMSA came as a result of both presidents, the president of UIMSA and the president of UADS coming together to discuss how it will be beneficial for both associations to have a joint health week seeing as the economic reality of the country is really bad currently so it will be nice to just pull resources together and then do a joint event.
It was born out of the need to reduce the cost and then do something a little bit spectacular because it will be the first of its kind , it was something that they believed would be very beneficial to all parties involved.
It wasn’t also just a decision that they took together, they reached out to members of the executive committee for each association and the executive members were also in sync with the plan and that was how the collaboration came out. It basically just increases our bond and it ultimately is something that helps reduce the cost of running a solo event.
What distinguishes this year’s health week from previous editions?
I believe it’s the healthweek itself, that is the whole collaboration between UIMSA and UADs because it’s going to be a first of its kind of healthweek. And, I mean the lineup for the healthweek comprises events that we’ve always had in the previous tenure. So, there’s literally nothing new that is coming into play, it’s just the approach that we are going to go about it that is different. I mean the dinner is gonna be joint so we are going to be having joint awards, joint class, parties,and all of that.
Another way in which it is different is that there is another association that is coming into play and we get to see and to experience things together as two associations coming as one.
I believe that also brings a new, and a fresh approach to how we are gonna be having these things. A couple of information will still come out in a couple weeks so do prepare well.
When did preparations begin, and what has the planning process been like?
The planning for this health week is something that we’ve been doing for about four five months now, so it’s been a long time. I believe our first meeting was sometime in may or june, i can’t really recall exactly but then it’s been a long time actually. A lot of meetings, a lot of deliberations has come into play and so I won’t say it’s been a very smooth plan, but, we’ve been able to achieve a lot based on constant meetings and so it’s been a couple of months actually, probably like four five months.
How are responsibilities divided between UIMSA and UADS, and in the case where there are joint committees, how do these joint committees operate?
There was a flyer for committee members for both associations, and then we put people in charge. So how it works is for UIMSA, there are different committees for each event and then for UADs, it’s the same thing, so basically we just come up with a budget, we have a separate budget for each of these committees and then we now have a joint budget at the end of it.
So, the whole idea is each association and each committee would have a separate budget for the events and at the end of the day we try and see how we can merge both committees together so everyone works in sync.
We understand that how it works in UADS cannot be how it works here- in UIMSA – so that’s why we did not try to create one joint committee. There is a central joint committee, where we have all the main discussion and all of that but for the actual committee themselves, there are separate committees for both UIMSA and UADS and we have separate coordinators or committee heads that handle each of this committee.
So basically, the committee heads for both UIMSA and UADS are in sync to make sure that everything is the same and nothing has been done outside the knowledge of either association. But like i said, there are events that are not exactly joint like the sport, like the quiz, the debate, those are not joint event, so those committee are operating of their own accord but for the joint events, there are separate committee and both committee heads are in sync to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
How have you approached fundraising and sponsorships, and what challenges has the organizing team encountered, and how are they being addressed?
We reach out to friends while we chat, alumni, and corporate bodies. So, we’ve reached out to a couple of people and we’ve also tasked each committee to come up with a sustainable and reasonable amount – a reasonable percentage of the budget so that we can actually cover the event very well. Like I said, the fundraising is always a hassle, but on our part we’ve tried, I mean personally, I’ve reached out to a lot of people, some of them have been responding, some of them haven’t responded, some of them said there is nothing currently.
I’ve been able to raise some amount of money but I still feel that we could do more so that is why we’ve been actively pushing and encouraging the committee heads and committee members to really push forward and try to raise as much funds as possible.
What has been your biggest challenge so far, and how have you dealt with it?
Once again, the biggest challenge so far has to be fundraising, you know you can’t really plan an event without enough funds,and as the event draws near you begin to panic when you’ve not gotten a substantial amount of money that is needed for the running of the event. So that is our biggest problem and we are finding suitable ways to find the solution to it.
Another issue that has played out is the fact that most committee heads have not been very proactive when it comes to raising funds and also attending meetings,so we’ve tried to encourage these committee heads to be more proactive and try as much as possible to attend meetings so that they could see where we at and be more active on the group chat.
Were there any challenges in bringing both associations together, particularly in coordinating their ideas, teams, and expectations?
Absolutely not, I mean, UIMSA and UADS have always had a very, nice relationship over the years so we’ve not really had any challenge in terms of bringing together and one way we even try to eliminate bias is through trying to be as neutral as possible is putting different people from the two associations in charge of each of the committees, so in every committee there is the UADS, UIMSA co-head, that way we try and mitigate any lingering issue or internal issues and also for most of our flyers for most of the things that we put out we try to input or include the members of UADS and also include members of UIMSA , we try to just strike a balance between the two associations to ensure that the committee relationship that we have keeps on moving smoothly and we do not try to cause any friction between both associations. So, yes, we’ve never really had any issues, I mean, in terms of coordinating both associations.
How do you coordinate the different activities and mobilise the committees and volunteers responsible for executing them?
I’d say it is not a task that only I handle. For example, from my side of the association, which is UIMSA, I’m the vice president, and from their own side of the association, which is UADS, it’s also their vice president. And from our side, we have put people in charge of committees that work and make sure things get done. And aside from people in committees, I do check on them to make sure things are going on smoothly. And even myself, I have help from the other members of the executive committee and the president and all the executive bodies.
And when we see that things aren’t going smoothly, we tend to reach out to the committee heads, and we make sure we ask and make sure and get to know what’s wrong with them. And even if the committee head seems to be unresponsive, we reach out to committee members personally to try and check what is going on in their committee, to know what exactly it is they are doing.
So to the question,I would say I have help from the executive members of the committee, from the president, and reaching out to the committee heads. So in summary, we work as a team and we ensure everything works. Because I’ve always believed in teamwork.
We have noticed that some activities in the programme appear to be organised separately. Is this a deliberate arrangement, and how do these individual activities fit into the overall vision of a joint Health Week?
Okay, so before I start, I would like to say that we’ve explored various ways for us to make it a synchronous event, but after we’ve tried, we just had to realize that there are still some peculiarities to this. Take the IMSG quiz, for example. The structure of the quiz, especially the clinical science parts,there are some of the things that we do that they don’t do. There are peculiar courses that we offer as a medical student that they don’t offer as a dental student, and there are some they do in their part that we don’t do and it’s not just the IMSG quiz alone.
On their own part, normally when they do their Health week, they do their quiz with their debates and their symposium on the same day. So if we look at these things, trying to merge some of the events together, we figured that it would be too cumbersome. And look at the idea of sport being a joint event, it won’t really be in sync. That’s what we’re looking at.
So I would say the peculiarities made us figure out that no matter how we look at it, some of these things cannot be in sync. And again, I feel like it’s quite evident. Everyone would understand why it seems that we can’t just merge these things together. Especially the particular ones I’ve mentioned.
We have noticed that the official merchandise for this year’s Health Week bears the identity “Ibadan Medicine,” which is commonly associated with UIMSA. Given that this is a joint Health Week between UIMSA and UADS, one might have expected the merchandise to reflect the identities of both associations. Could you shed some light on the decision behind the branding, and whether a jointly representative merchandise design was considered?
So, I think the merchandise thing is a misunderstanding, and we would like to clarify it. The merchandise is not a health Week thing, every tenure, there should be merchandise. Every single tenure, there’s merchandise, and the merchandise is a UIMSA thing. It is not necessarily a Health Week thing. Actually, it would have come earlier, but because of some logistic issues, it got postponed to this time of the year. So it’s not a Health Week thing. It’s a tenure thing. It’s a UIMSA merchandise thing.
And getting it to this time of the year, because it got postponed, we just had to maximize the opportunity and make it a thing that will talk about the Health Week. We just utilized the opportunity to get more discussion concerning the merch and to relate with the Health Week. It’s not necessary for the Health Week, but at least we get to use the opportunity to make it, to gain more publicity about the Health Week. So it’s a UIMSA merchandise thing, not a Health Week thing.
What can students expect from the sporting activities, quiz, and debate competitions?
So about expectations, I would say currently a couple of events have been going on. I mean, we’ve had indoor games. We’ve played volleyball, and we have three classes winning gold, silver, and bronze. So we’ve done a couple of events. I think we’ve wrapped up the indoor games as well, and basketball is ongoing too. In fact, in football games, there are group stages, they are playing the match, and it’s beautiful. If you’ve been around, you will know that these are great, great events, especially the quiz, where we recorded a significant turnout for the quiz, and a lot of UIMSAites came out, and it was very great. Coming up, I think the preliminary round for the debate, the preliminary round will be coming up very soon, and the head of the committee is someone that has been in the debating space, and he is an experienced person, so we should expect something great as well. So my charge to everyone is to expect great stuff, especially if you’ve been around. Make sure you witness great stuff.
How do you intend to measure the success of this year’s Health Week beyond attendance figures and smooth execution of activities?
So I would say there’s this satisfactory feeling you get whenever you’ve done something and you did it well. I mean, when you plan an event and there are no issues. And, this is me not saying there won’t be any issues, but I mean we try as much as possible to get the deliverables done as smoothly as possible. So there’s this satisfactory feeling that comes with it when you organize events and at least you tick all the boxes that are supposed to be ticked.
Also we get feedback from people, we’ve seen how things are going. You know, the actual Health Week itself is not here yet, but from the preliminary rounds of the events that we’ve been doing, we are making sure that we get feedback from people. We know how it is going, and we’ve seen that at least to an extent we are doing well. So we want to keep doing that and keep getting all the deliverables done.
I mean, if you organize an event and you see that there are little to no issues, there’s no electricity issue, there’s nothing that will hinder the smooth proceedings of the event, then there’s this satisfactory feeling you get as the organizer that will give you a feeling of a job well done.
And by the way, attendance is also very, very important. Nobody will want to organize an event and people will not come. We want people around as well. So attendance is equally important. But beyond the attendance metric, there’s this satisfactory feeling , and so much nice feedback you get when there is a job well done.
What legacy would you like this collaboration to leave, and could it shape future UIMSA–UADS partnerships?
I believe it all boils down to how we execute our plans. Because the initial idea came out of the economic reality of Nigeria. Maybe in subsequent times, if Nigeria gets better and the economy is okay, both parties might prefer going back to the initial way of doing it separately. But aside from that, if we do great stuff, which like I said, depends on how we execute our plan. If we do something very spectacular, it could shape the future of partnerships, maybe coming sets might decide to do something like this as well. Because, I mean, we set the bar so high. But yes, it all depends on how we execute the plan and what comes out of the whole event.
If you had 30 seconds to convince every student to participate, what would you say?
I could just start by saying a try will convince them. We’ve cooked, and it’s just for everybody to enjoy, and not just enjoy, participate as well.
I will try as much as possible to convince them not to miss any of the events, because even myself, in the past, there were some of the events I missed that I’m regretting now because I will be saying, Why did I miss that? Why did I miss that? Why did I miss that? And I don’t want that to be the reality of average students. So I will urge them to participate, to come around, and just assure them that we have great, great things in store.