{"id":221181,"date":"2024-11-13T11:50:30","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T16:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=221181"},"modified":"2024-11-13T12:08:37","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T17:08:37","slug":"meet-a-health-care-hero-and-uconn-medical-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2024\/11\/meet-a-health-care-hero-and-uconn-medical-student\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet a Health Care Hero and UConn Medical Student"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each year the Hartford Business Journal announces the winners of its prestigious Health Care Heroes Awards from across the state who are outstanding leaders in the health care industry and the epitome of a \u2018hero.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"
Fourth-year UConn School of Medicine medical student Nivedha Natchiappan accepting her award. (Brian Ambrose Photography).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the 2024 Health Care Heroes honored on Nov. 7 was Nivedha Natchiappan, a soon-to-be future doctor and graduate this May of UConn School of Medicine.<\/p>\n

Natchiappan is a part of the student-powered UConn Health Leaders (UCHL) leadership team, a volunteer organization that trains pre-health students to screen patients for and address social determinants of health (SDoH), which are social risk factors linked to health outcomes (i.e., food insecurity).<\/p>\n

The Hartford Business Journal<\/a> recently did this Q & A interview with Natchiappan:<\/p>\n

Q. What have been your significant contributions to your organization in the past year?
\n<\/strong>A.<\/strong> I\u2019ve been extremely fortunate for the opportunities I\u2019ve received through UCHL. I\u2019ve personally trained over 100 volunteers who have gone on to screen more than 10,000 patients across Connecticut for SDoH barriers. I also created a gynecologic oncology project aimed at identifying and addressing SDoH needs in newly diagnosed cancer patients. This has been especially meaningful because these patients not only have a higher burden of unmet social needs, but SDoH barriers also make it harder to complete their therapy. The hope is to ease the burden patients face while giving them the best chance to complete their cancer treatments.<\/p>\n

Q. Tell us about a challenge in your job that you were able to overcome.
\n<\/strong>A.<\/strong> The biggest challenge is seeing patient needs and feeling helpless, whether it\u2019s talking with a family who ran out of food as a UCHL volunteer, or sitting with a patient who can\u2019t afford their insulin as a medical student. To overcome requires creativity, commitment and knowledge of your community\u2019s resources.<\/p>\n

\"Nivedha
Nivedha Natchiappan of UConn School of Medicine at the Neag Comprehensive Center of UConn Health where she helped screen new GYN oncology patients for social determinants of health as part of UConn Health Leaders.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q. What\u2019s your next major goal and\/or challenge?
\n<\/strong>A.<\/strong> The next stop on my professional journey is residency, where I hope to continue this work. Additionally, several of my UCHL pre-health mentees \u2014 many of whom are first-generation in medicine \u2014 have applied to medical school, so another major goal of mine is to celebrate their acceptances in the upcoming months.<\/p>\n

Q. Residence?
\nA.<\/strong> Avon.
\n
\nQ. Favorite way to relax?
\nA.<\/strong> Spending time with friends and family.<\/p>\n

Q. Hobbies?
\nA.\u00a0<\/strong>Knitting, losing to my little brother in basketball, (mild) hiking.<\/p>\n

Q. Favorite movie?
\n<\/strong>A. <\/strong>\u201cCars 2.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q. Currently reading?
\n<\/strong>A. <\/strong>\u201cEducated,\u201d by Tara Westover.<\/p>\n

Q. Favorite cause?
\n<\/strong>A. <\/strong>Health equity.<\/p>\n

Q. Fun fact about you?
\n<\/strong>A. <\/strong>I won\u2019t eat chocolate unless it\u2019s in cake or ice cream form.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Learn more about the 2024 HBJ Health Care Heroes.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hartford Business Journal honors fourth-year UConn medical student Nivedha Natchiappan of Avon for creating a new social determinants of health screening for newly diagnosed gynecologic cancer patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":221204,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2429,1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-221181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards-scholarships","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 04:42:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221181"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221198,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221181\/revisions\/221198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/221204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221181"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=221181"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=221181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}