APPLEBAUM DARE TO DREAM IMPACT STORY Dreaming of Better Student Healthcare
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oday’s college students — and, to be fair, many of the rest of us — are accustomed to living life with the click of a button. Ordering a pizza. Getting a ride home. Scheduling an oil change. Why should selecting a physician be any different?
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It may not be for much longer, thanks to a couple of recent MBA graduates from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and participants of Phase 2 of the Eugene Applebaum Dare to Dream program, supported by the late Eugene Applebaum and Applebaum Family Philanthopy.
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Payal Parikh, MBA ’21, and Kasha Scott, MBA, ’21, are developing buddy/health, a digital health platform giving college students on-demand access to healthcare. The platform is designed to make healthcare more comfortable, accessible, and timely for students, many of whom may be making healthcare decisions for the first time. The duo also completed Phase 1 of the Dare to Dream program, supported by Tim Mayleben.
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It takes about 21 days for students to get a counseling appointment on campus. It may be another four weeks to get a followup appointment. About 13 percent of students seriously consider suicide.
“Students are really looking for an on-demand, Kasha Scott, MBA ’21, and Payal Parikh, MBA ’21 digital platform to access healthcare — they want something really easy,” Payal said. “That’s where buddy/health came into play. The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the need for better student healthcare options. For the first time, we’re seeing a relatively healthy population becoming really sick, and that’s something I don’t think a lot of college campuses were ready for.” The app’s greatest contribution to the current healthcare system may be its ability to tap into capacity that already exists.
Available through the Zell Lurie Institute of Entrepreneurial Studies at Michigan Ross, the Dare to Dream program enables some of the brightest and boldest minds in business to make their entrepreneurial dreams a reality, moving U-M students through the business creation process with development seminars and $300-$5,000 grants to individuals and/or “The vast majority of students don’t have student teams. a primary care physician,” Kasha said. “But “Thank you for your continued there are physicians available in Ann Arbor support of budding entrepreneurs or wherever they go to college. Tapping into The startup co-founders are living together in and those of us who want to “dip the San Francisco Bay area, with Kasha working our toes in the water” and for that capacity and making sure there is high at DaVita Kidney Care in its Redwoods Resident providing a launchpad for starting utilization among these primary care providers Program, where she is managing a dialysis to help these students navigate the healthcare to build an idea!” clinic. Payal is an investor with Unseen Capital, - Payal Parikh system is critical.” a healthcare venture capital fund focused on investing in underrepresented founders building Both students said the Dare to Dream program companies to promote greater health equity. made critical impacts in the development of buddy/health — including the freedom that comes with being unafraid to take risks. “I think Kasha and I were really struck by how difficult it was for us to navigate healthcare as students,” Payal said. “We both had “The Dare to Dream programming provided us with a starting experiences with the student healthcare system that we found to place for how we should think about launching the business,” be extremely frustrating. Our frustrations were mainly centered Kasha said. “We were able to attend small group ZLI workshops around confusion on what services and providers were covered by that focused on financials, customer discovery and building a our student health plan, how to find providers in the area that were business plan that enabled us to think methodically about our able to fit our personalized needs, and how we can get a simpler initial startup idea. It was also helpful to hear from other students way to get on-demand care and prescription services.” that were in the program to understand the questions, challenges and successes that they were having while being at the same stage The two decided to dig deeper into their concerns surrounding of the business development that we were at.” both physical and mental health services. They talked with approximately 50 students on these concerns. “We determined Moving forward, Kasha and Payal plan to pilot buddy/health at that students across the country really do lament about their U-M, collecting provider reviews with students. They are talking experiences with university health services,” Payal said. with another healthcare startup that builds out the technical infrastructure for such a platform, enabling the team to onboard Among the most surprising discoveries the duo made: local providers to help support the pilot.