TH Chan School of Medicine student Akanksha Nagarkar helps young people understand the connection between food and health through her non-profit organization MEAL (My Education, Action and Lifestyle) Inc.
“I’ve been interested in food justice since I was a little girl,” Nagarkar said, who remembers growing up in Leominster and sharing half a sandwich with a friend who missed lunch. “As a physician, I want to guide someone through a difficult time and be there for my patients.”
Nagarkar founded MEAL in 2018 while studying biology and anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He brought the program to UMass Chan, where eight other medical students now participate. MEAL partnered with a grassroots community organization called Neighbor to Neighbor to distribute vegetables and fruits during the COVID-19 pandemic. The group continues to provide nutrition education workshops to high school students at Holyoke High School North Campus.
“Food is medicine, and many of the problems we see on hospital wards and in operating rooms stem from poor access to food,” says Nagarkar, who just completed her third year at the University of Massachusetts Chan School of Medicine. “What we eat and our access to food makes a huge difference to our future health for chronic diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, and especially cancer.”
In 2023, Nagarkar received funding from the Remillard Family Community Service Fund to expand MEAL. The grant paid for new pedometers, sports equipment like pickleball paddles and yoga mats, and gift cards to encourage physical activity among Holyoke High School students.
Nagarkar, a new inductee into UMass Chan’s Gold Humanism Honor Society chapter, chose to enroll in the Population-Based Urban and Rural Community Health (PURCH) track, a program UMass Chan runs in collaboration with Baystate Health in Springfield, because she is passionate about addressing social determinants of health and disparities to improve health at the community and population levels, and she is considering oncology as a career path.
“Everything I’ve done in medical school has been geared towards further exploring racial disparities and finding solutions,” she says. “One of the benefits of MEAL is that students come up to me and say, ‘I want to go to medical school!’ Our program is kind of inspiring students to go into medicine or to do things they never thought possible. Inspiring the next generation in medicine is very important to me.”
Nagarkar is one of 45 students nationwide selected as an NIH Medical Research Program Scholar in 2024. She will spend a year as a National Institutes of Health research fellow conducting research on health disparities, a topic she became passionate about while studying cancer disparities in African-American populations with Dr. Jillian Richmond, assistant professor of Dermatology, as part of a clinical and translational research pathway.
“My experience working in the community has taught me that equitable research is essential to addressing health disparities,” Nagarkar said, “so it’s important that my research is representative of the diverse populations I serve and that I examine racial disparities in my community.”
Our Student Spotlight series will feature students from MA Chan’s Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tan Qingfeng Graduate School of Nursing, and T.H. Chan School of Medicine. For more information about MA Chan and how to apply, please visit: Prospective Student Page.
