Research Symposium 2025
Hosted by We Kids United | Berkeley & Johns Hopkins Chapters
Join us for the 2025 Research Symposium — a one-of-a-kind conference uniting high school and college students from over 20 chapters across the globe to share their ideas, research, and innovative solutions to real-world challenges rooted in health equity, displacement, and structural injustice.
📅 Event Details
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Date: TBD (Spring/Summer 2025)
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Time: 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM (local time)
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Location: Lecture Hall (UC Berkeley & Hopkins)
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Format: In-Person + Online Competition Eligibility
🏆 Awards
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Top 3 in each category (Sociological & Medical/Scientific)
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Best Poster
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Best Presenter
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8 winners total
All in-person presenters are also automatically entered into the Online Research Symposium Competition (~ 500 participants globally).
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Sociological Prompts
1. Statelessness and Citizenship Denial
How do government policies contribute to the creation of stateless populations? What are the long-term effects on identity, opportunity, and dignity?
2. Generational Labor Exploitation
Explore the ways in which migrant laborers and their children are locked into generational cycles of poverty. What structural systems maintain this cycle?
3. Informal Settlements and Healthcare Inequality
What are the public health implications of denying infrastructure and services to marginalized communities? How do these issues become invisible to national policy?
4. Language and Identity Suppression
How does forced assimilation or exclusion through language impact cultural identity and social mobility?
5. Racialized Borders and Internal Exclusion
Where do borders exist not on maps, but in how people are treated within a country’s own borders?
6. Trauma, Memory, and Resistance
How do marginalized communities preserve memory and resist structural erasure across generations?
7. Deportation, Refuge, and the Ethics of Belonging
When is deportation a violation of human rights? Who decides who “belongs” where?
Medical / Scientific Prompts Inspired by Batey and Similar Communities
1. Health Access in Stateless or Undocumented Populations
How does lack of legal status impact access to medical care, emergency treatment, and long-term health outcomes?
2. Malnutrition and Micronutrient Deficiency in Marginalized Children
What are the short- and long-term developmental consequences of micronutrient deficiencies in impoverished or rural communities?
3. Water-Borne Illness and Sanitation Crisis
How do poor sanitation and lack of clean water contribute to disease transmission, and what scalable public health solutions exist?
4. Reproductive Health in Underserved Women
What are the barriers to safe pregnancy and childbirth in migrant or undocumented populations?
5. Neglected Tropical Diseases and Environmental Health
How do geographic and economic marginalization contribute to the spread of neglected diseases (e.g., Chikungunya, Dengue, Leptospirosis)?
6. Generational Effects of Malnutrition, Stress, and Environmental Toxicity
How do early childhood stressors and nutritional deficits impact cognitive and physical development over time?
7. Mental Health and Medical Stigma in Displaced Communities
How is mental health addressed in migrant or stateless communities, and how does stigma affect diagnosis and treatment?
8. Community Health Worker (CHW) Models in Marginalized Areas
How effective are community-led health initiatives in closing the healthcare access gap?