Muskaan Sawhney

Community-Academic Scholar: Muskaan Sawhney (she/her)

Project: This summer, Muskaan worked with Professor Manabu Nakamura and Avicenna Community Health Center to deliver a sustainable, cost-effective, and community-based dietary-focused weight loss management program to local, low-income patients who are overweight or obese. Learn more about the project.  

Mentor reflection: "Muskaan was an exemplary intern that truly went above and beyond. She consistently provided quality work, was reliable, and was a pleasure to work with," said Ashleigh Oliveira, a graduate student in the Obesity Lab. "While working in our lab as an undergraduate scholar, she displayed the drive and work quality of a graduate student working on their own PhD research."

Scholar reflection: “Speaking with community health centers and developing a community needs assessment helped me to understand how to identify the core issues of health behavior in a population and ideate potential solutions. Moving forward, I can use this experience to help me develop a framework for future prevention-based clinical studies that I may want to conduct through my journey in the health field.” 

Do you have a personal story or path that led to my interest in this project?
I have always been interested in finding and developing ways to combat the root cause of a problem, and I found a way to apply that passion when I formed a personal interest in genetics and disease. When I was in high school, my mom discovered that she had a genetic mutation that caused the majority of her pain and developing diseases. After witnessing her tough and costly path through personalized holistic care, I was fascinated to learn that modification of our lifestyle can have an impact on preventing predisposed issues and it sparked my interest in prevention care. With obesity rates and heart disease biomarkers increasing throughout America, I believe the best way to minimize the associated risk of non-communicable diseases is through a preventative approach. However, there is an irony in existing holistic care programs. The populations in which preventative care can have the most impact, low-income families who are adversely affected with obesity and chronic disease, cannot afford it. Unfortunately, the treatment-based profit model of our health care system, reinforces the negative cycle between emerging chronic diseases and financial constraint that low-income families face. My goal is to pursue a career in medicine to utilize genetics and technology to establish equitable and accessible preventative care models to prevent non communicable hereditary diseases. Working on a patient-based project that helps develop plans to overcome these health behaviors and to educate the community on nutritional practices and sustainable life changes opened my eyes to the feasibility of my goals. 

How did participating in this program help you toward your goals?
Through working with Dr. Nakamura and Ashleigh, I had the opportunity to see how a clinical trial on a weight loss study is developed and implemented. Additionally, my personal project was to work on modifying the current program to meet the needs of the low-income population. Speaking with community health centers and developing a community needs assessment helped me understand how to identify the core issues of health behavior in a population and ideate potential solutions. Moving forward, I can use this experience to help me develop a framework for future prevention based clinical studies that I may want to conduct through my journey in the health field. 

What was the most meaningful part of this experience?
Having the ability to have hands-on experience in a clinical study was the most meaningful part of working with Empower. As an undergraduate student, I had the opportunity to lead meetings with community partners, sit in on nutrition consults, interact with and help enroll patients, and work closely with the graduate team in the lab. I was able to offer my ideas on the research study and given the creative freedom to explore and implement those ideas. Through this experience, I developed more confidence in the research space and experience in the niche area of sustainable nutritional weight loss.