Program: Sports Medicine '12

Currently, Hari Athreya is a fourth year medical student at the McGovern Medical School. Next year, he plans on beginning a family medicine residency to become a socially responsible and active physician. Community health and community service has been a key influence in his career choices.

After graduating from Rice University with a Sports Medicine degree in 2012, he worked for non-profits for one year in Ghana and India. The following year, he joined AmeriCorps State and AmeriCorps NCCC to enroll in community service to America for one year. His passion for community service and social justice followed him to medical school, where he would continue to institute the principles of care that were impressed on him during his time of service.

In his first year of medical school, he created a community-based participatory obesity prevention program. The following year he created a preventive health and wellness organization at his medical school that aimed to improve the health of medical professionals and the communities they were treating.

Last year, his interest in community health and social justice led Hari to complete a Master in Public Health in Community Health and Policy in hopes of becoming a more effective community leader. His year in public health led to an opportunity to work at the HQ for the World Health Organization on a topic that he has been passionate about since taking Roberta Anding’s HEAL 103-Nutrition class at Rice—childhood obesity prevention.

Most recently, Hari has received an Albert Schweitzer Fellowship to pursue another obesity prevention project in which he will provide nutrition education and cooking classes to a community, while piloting a food delivery service for SNAP eligible families.