ViTAL Chats by ViTAL: Northeastern University's Healthcare Innovation Core

Learn about Dr. Laurie Kramer, a professor at the Applied Psychology department of Northeastern University, and former director of the University Honors Program. She will be speaking about her road to academia, her enterprising endeavors, and advice for undergrads pursuing research.

On this episode of ViTAL Chats, we are speaking with Sia Shah, the events coordinator of Rural Health Initiatives (RHI) at Northeastern. Sia shares with us some of the key factors that limit access to care for rural populations, what RHI is doing to combat this, and what listeners can do to help.

In this episode of ViTAL Chats, we interviewed Kim Valente, the CFO of Strong Minds, a non-profit dedicated to revolutionizing mental health in Africa. Strong Minds offers cost-free group therapy to underprivileged women and young individuals in Uganda, Zambia, and Kenya. Since 2013, they’ve helped 230,000 individuals combat depression. Our discussion today hopes to shed light on non-profit careers and strategies to tackle the global mental health crisis.

The Husky Health Innovation Challenge (HHIC) was founded by ViTAL in 2018 as the first healthcare-focused case competition for undergraduates in the Greater Boston Area. In teams of three to four, participants propose innovative digital health solutions to a salient issue in healthcare identified as the case topic.

Leading up to the 2023 competition, we invited last year's winners, Alana Caluwe, Virali Patel, Sanjita Bhattacharya, and Adam Kwoh to share their experience. Tune into this episode of ViTAL Chats to learn about the Spring 2022 HHIC case, the team's process of curating their solution, and the advice they have for this year's participants.

In this episode of ViTAL Chats, we interviewed Brett Miller, a Northeastern alumni and the founder of 110 Fitness - the largest wellness center in the world for people with Parkinson's disease. Brett is a researcher, a licensed physical therapist, and the Head Coach of Rock Steady Boxing South Shore. He shares insight into the physical therapy industry and the journey to founding a business.

In this episode, we interviewed Thanh Doan, an undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins University. Thanh has had various experiences working on research projects, including one on Hepatitis B Screening in the Asian American population at Stanford Care. He shares this experience, and elaborates on other projects he had been involved in, how to get started, and how to balance research with coursework and social life.