Policy Challenge

Applications for the Public Policy Challenge will open in January 2025.

Students enrolled in any Georgetown graduate program are eligible to apply, either as an individual or as a team of 2-5 students. Individuals will be placed on teams with other students with similar policy interests. The application for the 2025 Public Policy Challenge will open in January 2025. Please address any questions to publicpolicychallenge@georgetown.edu.

The Georgetown Public Policy Challenge tasks graduate students with developing innovative solutions to issues in the Washington, DC region. Hundreds of students have participated and thousands of dollars in prize money has been awarded through this competition since its founding in 2014, leading to the development and implementation of proposals focusing on a large range of policy issues across the District.

The 2023 Georgetown Public Policy Challenge grand prize was awarded to William Macci (L’24) and Sparsha Muralidhara (G’23) for their proposal, E-QualityDC, which empowers DC public schools to bridge the digital divide for at-risk students, connecting families to accessible and affordable resources.

Georgetown University School of Medicine students Kira Chandran (M‘23), Pei-Ying Kobres (M‘23), Chloe Wang (M‘23) and Ruth Watson (M‘23) were awarded the grand prize in 2022 for the proposal “​​Within Reach: Ending Opioid-Related Deaths in the District.” They proposed installing NaloxBox, a weather-proof opioid rescue kit, at bus stops in Wards 5, 7 and 8 to help mitigate the impact of DC’s opioid epidemic by allowing easier access to the life-saving medicine.

Other past winning proposals have addressed assisting small businesses with purchasing property in DC, the issues young homeless parents face in the District, DC’s high asthma prevalence and ER utilization rates, a mobile clinic to supply free flu vaccinations to vulnerable neighborhoods, a skills-based job training program housed within public libraries, a workshop teaching forgiveness and reconciliation to high-risk Latino youth, and a mobile-based application that directly addresses absenteeism and academic performance.