This year, I started medical school at Brown University and it has been nothing short of awe-inspiring. I was incredibly nervous for this transition. I knew that medical school would be challenging, and assumed the challenge would bring along anxiety. But it hasn’t. Instead, this challenge has brought me an overwhelming sense of peace — I feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be at this exact moment. And it shocks me. I have actually found my passion, and I am grateful every day. Over the past six months, the world of medicine has begun to unfold before me, revealing its complexities and wonders, and I’ve found myself deeply in love with every aspect of this immensely rewarding field. I realized that rather than learning for my own curiosity (which is how I have approached learning in the past), I am learning for my future patients. I feel honored and humbled to be given the opportunity, space, and support to learn how to heal and to be trusted with such a remarkable responsibility. This realization has led me to a deep sense of respect for the material and the doctors, peers, and patients who teach me. Last semester, I helped a plastic surgeon build an entirely new, operational thumb for a woodworker who sawed his thumb off building a chair for his daughter’s birthday. I witnessed the birth of a baby to parents who had gone through four cycles of IVF. I observed an orthopedic surgeon insert a rod into a 12-year-old’s femur, ensuring that a car crash wouldn’t end his passion for dance, and listened as a psychiatrist helped a 10-year-old find her lost memories. It’s like magic. I’m incredibly humbled and grateful for the continued support and generosity of MVYouth. Thanks to their kindness, Brown University has become my incredible beginning, and I get to become a doctor.
Rose Engler - Brown University
Last year, I graduated from Brown with a BA in Public Health and founded a digital healthcare startup, COAD. I’m taking the year to pursue my venture before matriculating into Brown’s medical school this August. I plan to pursue a concentration in Medical Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, enabling me to earn my MD while launching COAD.
COAD utilizes behavioral decision science to fundamentally change the way patients remember to take their medicine. >151M Americans take medication, but 3/4 don’t take them as directed. Why? 69% simply forget. This forgetfulness costs patients their health, their loved ones their peace of mind, the US healthcare system $300B/year, and our communities over 125,000 lives/year. COAD is a behavior-based digital healthcare platform comprised of a revolutionary smart pillbox integrated with a user-friendly mobile app that work together to significantly boost medication adherence, empower caregiving, and improve health outcomes. We remind patients to take their medicine, notify their loved ones when they forget, and generate verifiable adherence reports to optimize and personalize patient care.
This spring, COAD won the Brown Venture Prize and utilized the capitol to drive product development throughout Brown’s summer accelerator. Today, our team is in the Master of Business Creation program through the University of Utah—a top 10 entrepreneurship program—which acts as a 9-month accelerator designed to launch, commercialize, and scale startups. Today, we are finishing product development, organizing a pilot through Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, and preparing to launch B2B through an Accountable Care Organization. We are raising a pre-seed round of $250K in part to fund small-batch manufacturing for our pilot with Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. I consider MVYouth part of my family and would love your support as we continue this adventure. Above all else, I sincerely thank you for your investment in my educational journey. It provided me with the education, resources, and freedom to follow my passions and develop COAD!
Rose Engler - Brown University
This spring, I will be graduating from Brown with a degree in Public Health. I plan on taking one year off to pursue my venture before matriculating into Brown's medical school to continue the PLME. This past year has been one of evolving passions, narrowing interests, and exploring opportunities.
This past summer, I interned for Khushi Baby, a startup developing India's first comprehensive electronic health record system. As the Innovation Intern, I attended meetings with India's public health experts and used their input to lead a team of software engineers in the development of an app that was ultimately integrated into Khushi Baby’s larger digital health platform. Working directly under the CEO and CFO, I fell in love with the startup culture and learned how to lead a digital health company. I took this newfound knowledge and decided to develop my own venture.
COAD, which stands for Community Adherence, is a venture that incorporates a patient's support network into the medication reminder process to ultimately improve medication adherence—the percentage of time a patient takes their medication as prescribed/on time. Over the fall semester, I translated my idea into action and made significant progress in the venture-building process. Specifically, I performed 300 customer interviews, completed comprehensive bottom-up research, assembled a team, and built a prototype. This spring, our team will continue developing iterations of the MVP and start looking for funding. We are all extraordinarily excited!
I am incredibly humbled and grateful for the continued support and generosity of MVYouth. Thanks to their kindness, Brown University has become my incredible beginning. I am excited to see what comes next!
Rose Engler - Brown University
When I began on my journey to an MD, my primary goal was to acquire a global medical education; I want to learn about cultural diversity and how it affects the human condition so that I can better understand my patients and the meaning of care. I followed this interest to Taiwan in 2019, where I studied Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In TCM, doctors do not treat an illness, but rather a person with an illness. My experience in Taiwan taught me that health care reaches far beyond the physical body and should aim to maintain a delicate harmony between the body and soul. Patient and physician interviews alongside discussions with healers, patient families, and Buddhist monks taught me that one’s mental, physical and spiritual health, society, culture, and environment all affect that harmony, and therefore, should all be cared for. A few months later, I traveled to Israel to conduct research on how internalized stigma affects the quality of life of people who are HIV+. The conglomerate of physician and patient interviews made one thing apparent: that illness has both physiological and psychosocial components that need to be discussed and addressed. This made me realize that in some ways, the goal of western medicine is beginning to align with that of eastern medicine, both approaches searching for harmony. These experiences have allowed me to interweave aspects of various religions, cultures, and values to create a multifaceted medical education that celebrates individualism. I hope to carry this mindset into the medical community when I become a physician with the goal of implementing an integrative medical practice that inspires doctors to tailor their care to their patient’s unique needs. I am incredibly humbled and grateful for the support and generosity of MVYouth. Thanks to their kindness, Brown University has become my incredible beginning, and the world has become my classroom. As we move into the future, I hope that the global community will continue to work together to contain the Coronavirus so that we can all begin to heal and move into our new normal.
Rose Engler - Brown University
A year and a half into my medical education, I can now see that patients are more than protons and neutrons; they are thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams chipped and painted by their surrounding cultures and circumstances. My goal is to interweave aspects of various religions, cultures, and values to create a multifaceted medical education that celebrates individualism. Brown has given me the tools to pursue this goal, pushing me out of my campus comfort zone and into the world. I was lucky enough to travel to Taiwan to take a class on Traditional Chinese Medicine and Comparative Bioethics at the National Cheng Kung University School of Medicine. I spent my summer days shadowing doctors of another culture to gain a deeper understanding of my own. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, doctors do not treat an illness, but rather a person with an illness. Participating in this program helped me understand TCM so that when I become an expert in western medicine, I can combine these two traditions in the creation of a holistic medical practice. In a few days, I will be traveling to Israel to study HIV/AIDS. I view this class, not as a subject to be mastered, but as an opportunity to be experienced. An opportunity for me and my classmates to dig in and gain a deeper appreciation for the way people and their communities face healthcare challenges in the context of their values, cultures, and respective societies. While I don’t know exactly what I will get out of this experience, I know it will be far beyond my wildest imagination. In addition, Brown’s Program in Liberal Medical Education has taught me that a medical education has no bounds; therefore, over the past year and a half, I have taken classes on poetry, engineering, and computer science in addition to physiology and chemistry. I can not wait to see what comes next. I am incredibly humbled and grateful for the support and generosity of MVYouth. Thanks to your kindness, Brown University has become my incredible beginning, and the world has become my classroom.
Rose Engler - Brown University
The past few months that I have spent at Brown University have been the best of my life. I know that is a bold statement, but it is so very true.
I have found friendships that inspire me and a newfound freedom of expression that is celebrated by those around me. On top of this, I have never felt more intelligent in my life. Each class would leave me wondering what would come next, and giddy about what I had just learned. I would dive into office hours with a page of questions, and I would leave with double. Brown’s flexible curriculum left me taking classes that I adored: Biotechnology in Medicine, The Brain: An Introduction to Neuroscience, the Anthropology of Culture and Health, and Flat Earth to Quantum Uncertainty: On the Nature and Meaning of Scientific Explanation. The material was difficult, but I found myself choosing to watch documentaries involving the efficacy of CRISPRi, rather than logging onto Netflix to watch Lost. The knowledge was a tidal wave, but by finals, I could surf.
I began my semester overwhelmed with opportunities. Everywhere I looked there was someone to meet and something to explore, so I shopped 21 classes and explored 13 clubs. I bounced from Japanese drumming classes to cheerleading tryouts, and no, I have never touched a pom-pom or my toes in my life. I beatboxed through acapella tryouts, stumbled through dance teams and laughed through comedy troops. After a number of hectic weeks, I settled into a few exciting clubs. In fact, this January I will hop on a plane to Honduras with Brown Global Brigades to provide primary healthcare to underserved populations.
I am incredibly humbled and grateful for the support and generosity of MVYouth. Thanks to their kindness, Brown University has provided an incredible beginning.