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| Rajvi Mehta, MS3 |
Currently
a third year medical student at Duke, I am also the founder of Let’s Be Well
RED (LBWR) a social venture in India which aims to combat the widespread
prevalence of iron-deficiency anemia (80% Indians are anemic) by providing
iron-rich nutritional bars called GudNeSs. Each bar contains the WHO
recommended daily dosage of iron.
Before
I get into my time at Duke, a little more background may help: I was born and
raised in Mumbai, India and pursued my undergraduate studies at Brown
University. During my first semester there, I started feeling sick and pale—I
was exhausted all the time, couldn’t focus while studying, and my grades
suffered. When I went back home over winter break I got tested and found that I
had iron deficiency anemia and through my interactions with local physicians, I
also found that Iron deficiency is a huge public health problem in the country.
Two things intrigued me: one, I was born and raised there, but had never heard
of anemia being such a big problem and two, why is anemia such a huge problem when
the solution is very simple—all you need is an adequate amount of iron in your
diet! To understand the situation a little more, I conducted anemia testing and
treating camps in urban slums in Mumbai and through my interactions with anemic
women I realized that while most of them understood the importance of adding
iron to their diet and many of them had already suffered the consequences of
the condition, they were looking for a simple solution to the problem—they were
looking for one food product that contained the WHO recommended daily dosage of
iron. When I surveyed the Indian market, I did not find any such product, so to
fill this need we created our very own iron-rich nutritional bars called
GudNeSs.
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| GudNeSs bars launched in 2012 |
By
the time I graduated from Brown, I had a small startup in India but I decided
to go to medical school. I wanted a medical school with a great global health
program, a good affiliated business school and one that encouraged an
entrepreneurial spirit within the student body. Duke met these expectations and
when I started medical school at Duke, I had two goals: I wanted to continue
growing my company and I wanted to conduct a clinical trial to prove efficacy
of GudNeSs. What I wasn’t ready for was the support I received from my Duke
family! 15 classmates joined me in spreading the movement and 10 of them spent
their spring break in India to start our clinical trial. Dean Andrews and Dr.
Clements supported us from the start and provided the necessary guidance and
encouragement. The trial proved efficacy of the bars and the results will be
published shortly.
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| Duke medical students with LBWR health scouts in Mumbai |
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| Medical students spreading awareness about anemia in India |
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| Patient recruitment for a clinical study |
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| Press meets and fun in Mumbai |
At
the same time, we participated and won the Duke Start Up Challenge--a yearlong
program business plan competition. This allowed us to spread our services to 3
more states in India, establish our own production unit and today we have 40
employees looking after manufacture, marketing and sale of 100,000 bars/week.
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| LBWR wins the Duke Startup Challenge |
I
had no idea I would get so much support from the faculty and the medical
students at Duke. I am confident that with this continued support, we will
achieve our goal of combatting iron-deficiency anemia in India!
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