Year: Rising junior
Major: Economics, pre-med
Minor: Chemistry
Growing up, 窪蹋勛圖厙 rising junior Manav Midha found himself torn between focusing his career goals on medicinehaving the humbling power to save livesor economicsunderstanding how incentives shape our decision-making.
When he found out you can actually major in anything and still go to medical school, he was amazed, and decided to focus on the latter.
I knew that I foremost wanted to be a doctor, and then a policy researcher, Midha explained. Im driven by the idea that while a doctor can make a tremendous impact one patient at a time, policymakers can effect change on the order of millions. I want to help connect these worlds that feel so disparate right now.
Midha recently completed a project that did just that. The pre-med student took his understanding of the biology of glioblastoma treatment, and his knowledge of health care economics, and posed a question: Considering quality of life and substantial financial costs, should certain patients with brain cancerspecifically, MGMT unmethylated glioblastomain the United States receive temozolomide chemotherapy?
Not much research attention has been given to quality of life and cost considerations at the level of individual genes before, so I think we had a novel research question, Midha noted.
Midha went to work to find an answer with the help of his mentor , associate professor and chair of the economics department at .
What they found was chemotherapy may not be the best treatment for these brain cancer patients because it decreases their quality of life for very little survival benefit and considerable financial costs.
Our conclusion was that this group of patients would be particularly well-served by being enrolled in clinical trials, instead of receiving temozolomide chemotherapy, Midha explained.
Midha wanted doctors treating glioblastoma patients to know about their findings. He checked past years archives for similar research, and with the help of Votruba, wrote an abstract to ASCOs specifications. To Midhas delight, they accepted it as a poster presentation at the Central Nervous System Tumors Session at ASCOs annual meeting, held virtually earlier this month.
The economics major went on to submit his pre-recorded presentation to ASCOthe worlds leading professional organization for physicians and oncology professionals treating cancer patients.
No matter what the specifics of the future look like for me, I know I want to see patients, Midha said. It is easy to start thinking of each data point as just another dot on a plot. I never want to forget that each data point represents a person, who has a family that loves them, and who has passions and desires of their own.
When hes not focused on health care, Midha remains busy. Hes a member of the ; a representative in the ; the finance chair for the ; and treasurer and dancer on the dance team. Hes also currently in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Centers Cancer-focused Summer Undergraduate Research (CanSUR) program.
To learn more about Midhas work, he submitted to the ASCO.
