Global Impact of a Brief Life Commemorated Oct. 16 with First Nehal A. Shah Memorial Global Health Award

Global Impact of a Brief Life Commemorated Oct. 16 with First

Nehal A. Shah Memorial Global Health Award

From:   AHSC Office of Public Affairs                                     
           (520) 626-4828

The first award from an endowment fund established in memory of University of Arizona College of Medicine student Nehal Shah will enable a classmate to travel on a volunteer medical mission to Tanzania.

Connor Lundy, a fourth-year UA medical student and Nehal’s Global Health classmate, will travel to Shirati, Tanzania, early next year as the first recipient of the Nehal Shah Memorial Global Health Award. Today’s announcement by Ronald Pust, MD, director of the college’s Global Health curriculum, commemorates what would have been Nehal’s 25th birthday on Oct. 16.

Nehal died May 4 in Phoenix following a long struggle with depression, 11 days before she would have graduated with her medical degree. Shortly after her death, her classmates started a memorial fund in her name. The Nehal A. Shah Endowment for Global Health Education, in the UA Department of Family and Community Medicine, will help UA medical students travel to the people who most need them.

“Nehal always wanted to get to the root of everything; she wanted to make a difference,” remembered her father, Anil Shah of Phoenix. He said Nehal hoped to better society by extending her knowledge of medicine to the less fortunate, locally and globally.
 
“What inspires me is the belief that healing involves more than treating individual health needs, but rather means to fight for humanity, human dignity and justice,” Nehal wrote in her personal statement on entering the college.

 “She was the most brilliant person I have ever met,” said her medical school professor, William Adamas-Rappaport, MD, of the UA Department of Surgery.  “What’s more, she didn’t talk about things; she did them.”
 
Her short life was full of accomplishment. Nehal graduated from high school in three years instead of the usual four. She earned her bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology from the UA. At age 20, she traveled to the slums of Mumbai, India, to care for those in need. During medical school, she started and managed a medical magazine, attended the AIDS Leadership Institute and helped plan the American Medical Student Association National Circle of Healers Retreat.

          
Gifts to the Nehal A. Shah Endowment for Global Health Education may be made out to UAF: Shah Endowment, and mailed to UA College of Medicine, P.O. Box 245018, Tucson, AZ  85724-5018. For more information, please call (520) 626-2827.