T.H. Chan School of Medicine student Akanksha Nagarkar helps young people understand the connection between food and health through her nonprofit organization, M.E.A.L. (My Education, Action and Lifestyle) Inc.
“I was interested in food justice from a very young age,” said Nagarkar, who remembers sharing half of her sandwich with friends who didn’t have lunch when she was growing up in Leominster. “As a physician, I want to guide someone through difficult times and be there for my patients.”
Nagarkar created M.E.A.L. in 2018 while studying biology and anthropology at UMass Amherst. She brought the program to UMass Chan and eight other medical students are now involved. M.E.A.L. 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 for high schoolers at Holyoke High School North Campus.
“Food is medicine. A lot of problems we see on the floors and in surgery are due to low access,” said Nagarkar, who just finished her third year at UMass Chan. “What we eat and the access we have to foods makes a huge difference on our future health with chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension and especially cancer.”
IN 2023, Nagarkar received funding from the Remillard Family Community Service Fund to expand M.E.A.L. The grant funded new pedometers, sports equipment such as pickleball paddles and yoga mats, and gift cards to incentivize exercise for Holyoke High students.
A new inductee into UMass Chan’s chapter of the Gold Humanism Honor Society, Nagarkar chose to enroll in the Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health (PURCH) track, a program UMass Chan has with Baystate Health in Springfield, because she is passionate about addressing social determinants of health and disparities to improve health on a community- and population-level. She is considering oncology as a career path.
“Everything I’ve done in medical school has been geared toward investigating racial disparities further and creating solutions,” she said. “One of the benefits of M.E.A.L. is that students come up to me and say, ‘I want to go to medical school!’ Our program is almost encouraging them to go into medicine or do something they didn’t think was possible. Inspiring the next generation of people in medicine is very important to me.”
Nagarkar was one of 45 students nationwide selected as an NIH Medical Research Program Scholar in 2024. She will spend a year as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health conducting research on health disparities. She became passionate about this topic while researching cancer disparities in African American populations with Jillian Richmond, PhD, assistant professor of dermatology, as part of the Clinical and Translational Research Pathway.
“My experience working in the community has shown me equitable research is crucial to improving health disparities,” said Nagarkar. “It’s important that my research is representative of the diverse populations I serve and to investigate racial disparities in the community.”
The Student Spotlight series features UMass Chan Medical School students in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing and T.H. Chan School of Medicine. For more information about UMass Chan Medical School and how to apply, visit the Prospective Students page.
