Ms. Shivani Patel graduated summa cum laude from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science with a minor in Chemistry. She is also a 2018 aluma of Upward Bound, a federally funded pre-collegiate program designed to navigate first-generation students toward the path to pursue higher education. As an undergraduate at Marist, Ms. Patel worked as an academic tutor and college prep advisor for the Newbergh/Poughkeepsie Upward Bound Program. For her honors thesis, she worked as a student assistant for the Catskill Hudson Area Health Education Center to redesign Scrubs Club, a pre-health exploration program for disadvantaged, underrepresented, middle-school and high-school students living in medically underserved communities. As an undergraduate, she also served as the Executive Director for the Marist College St. Jude organization, where she led a team of nine executive members and coordinated campus efforts to raise over $43,000 for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Her initial interest in public health and palliative care arose from her role as a hospice volunteer in her local community. For Ms. Patel, engaging with her community is a reciprocal, moving experience of learning, growing, and giving back. As an aspiring physician, she hopes to nourish a positive outlook on healthcare within her community.
Although India is ranked lower on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Quality of Death Index, Kerala, India is described as a global model for its efforts in expanding palliative-care services. Kerala’s bottom-up organization developed by community and nongovernmental organization collaboration lends itself as a replicable, compassionate-care model. While researchers attribute its success to community organization, less research surrounds the increasing youth involvement in palliative-care. Ms. Patel’s Fulbright-Nehru project is identifying key components of the Indian palliative-care system, conducting empirical research on youth engagement at NGOs in Kerala, and comparatively analyzing palliative-care models throughout India that deviate from the Kerala model. After her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, she aspires to attend medical school.