Why I Built Invite Health
'Why' has many answers. I could write essays, or talk your ear off.
A Little Context
Hi, this is Sachi.
I’ve had writing this “Why I Built Invite Health” on my to-do list for about a month now (see screenshot below of this task sitting in my Notion). It’s been one of those things that I’ve been putting off, since I struggle with perfectionism and I had such high expectations for how I wanted this to be articulated. However, this just led me to never writing it.
I felt prompted to write this today because I came back from a class where we had discussions about the value of education and about being intentional with the educational opportunities we are given, which ties well with why I built Invite Health. So, here’s the story.
Why did I build Invite Health?
I don’t have one easy answer for this. I will say that Invite Health is truly a reflection of my journey as a student navigating careers in health & healthcare, and it is a reflection of my values.
I’m building Invite Health as something I wish that my younger self had. That’s the guiding philosophy I use in every decision I make about Invite Health.
Now, I’ll share a quick personal journey.
Since I started my higher education journey, I knew that I wanted to work in healthcare. I thought that I wanted to become a doctor, because I saw doctors as people who could make the most impact in healthcare and in people’s lives, which aligns with my own values of doing meaningful and impactful work. So, I actually did all of the work and applied to medical schools! I wrote the MCAT (didn’t do that great), wrote the CASPer (went a bit better), put my achievements on an ABS, and everything else that is required for applying to medical schools. Also, if you’re not familiar with these terms, don’t worry. For transparency purposes:
MCAT = “The Medical College Admission Test® (MCAT®), developed and administered by the AAMC, is a standardized, multiple-choice examination created to help medical school admissions offices assess your problem solving, critical thinking, and knowledge of natural, behavioral, and social science concepts and principles prerequisite to the study of medicine.”
CASPer = “Casper is an online, open-response situational judgment test (SJT). It asks what you would do in a tough situation, and more importantly, why. This helps determine behavioral tendencies of applicants pursuing people-centered professions.”
ABS = “The ABS is a detailed and comprehensive list of your activities since age 16, within any of the following categories: Employment, Volunteer Activities Extracurricular Activities, Awards and Accomplishments, Research, Other”
My application results: rejections from all of the schools I applied to.
In hindsight and after lots of reflection after getting my rejections, I realized that I didn’t actually want to become a doctor. During the application process, I didn’t really feel excited about becoming a doctor. I knew this fact deep down as I was applying to medical schools, but didn’t want to admit it because I had already lost so much time from doing the application (ex: MCAT, CASPer, etc.).
Being honest with myself, there were probably 2 main reasons why I applied to medical schools when I knew that I honestly didn’t want to:
All of my friends around me were applying (probably about 9/10 of people)
I didn’t know much about what other career pathways I could pursue (that aligned with my own interests and skills), and what steps I should take to achieve them.
It is point #2 that puzzled me, and probably started my Invite Health journey. I was always told by people around me that I could do anything I wanted to in healthcare; I could pursue anything that interested me.
I’ll make this analogous with learning a new sport. You can’t tell a beginner athlete to look at a professional player and say, “you can become this”, without providing them any instruction. To help the beginner athlete become a pro, you do a variety of things: teach them how to play the sport, learn the game rules, invite them to compete in games, and give them feedback.
I think it’s the same thing with career pathways and aspirations. People told me about accomplished individuals and where they are at, but not about what they did to get there. However, I wanted to know,
How did they spend their summers?
Who were their mentors?
What was a pivotal experience that inspired them to pursue their current career?
and more.
So, if a student like myself wants to learn, for example, how to become a healthcare entrepreneur, they should be informed about mentors who are willing to help them, programs where they can receive funding, events where they can pitch their ideas, and more. And this is just one small example.
That’s what I’m hoping to address here with Invite Health- the details, the process, and the opportunities that are available to students as they navigate careers in healthcare.
If you’re interested in learning about how my values are reflected in Invite Health, keep reading.
That was only a fraction of the “why” behind Invite Health.
I enjoy drawing inspiration from others. I found some quotes and thoughts from people that I think are articulated well, and contribute to my thought process as to why I built Invite Health. If you happen to resonate with any of these, let me know. I love sharing ideas and inspiration.
Sharing opportunities with others is my love language
alt text: [tweet from Twitter: my love language is 100% sending you job postings or side projects I think you’d be amazing at and I have no shame about it.” - Areena Akhter, @areena_akhter]
If this is a love language, then it’s one of my top 3. Before building Invite Health, I always sent my friends resources and opportunities that aligned with their interests and personalities. For example, if I knew one of my friends was interested in public health, I would send them all the student job postings or events related to public health. So, when building Invite Health, I thought, I love sharing postings with my friends, so why not share it with more people? Hence, the job opportunities you see posted in my opportunity roundups.
The discrepancy between talented students and opportunity
“Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not”, quote from the How I Built This with Guy Raz podcast, episode 445.
alt text: [Link to Apple Podcast. How I Built This with Guy Raz. Episode 445: HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid]
One of the things that I’ve noticed about a lot of the work that I’ve done, whether volunteer or work, is that I’ve worked with lots of bright minds. I absolutely love being around people who leave me inspired after every conversation we share. There are lots of bright and ambitious people I know. However, I do recognize that there is a disparity between these bright people and the opportunities (i.e. jobs, education, events, networks) that exist. There are many contributors to this disparity, including financial barriers, geographical location, and lack of the student’s knowledge about the opportunities. It is this last point, lack of knowledge about the opportunities, that I think I can address. *Admittedly*, I spend a lot of time online trying to find opportunities. I am an internet explorer (>.<). I built Invite Health as a way for me to share these opportunities with people. Invite Health may just be one way to reduce that talent-opportunity disparity, especially for students trying to break into healthcare.
Side note, this is one of my favourite podcasts.
Healthcare is intersectional
alt text: [tweet from Twitter: “Researchers who study Type 2 Diabetes have reached a stark conclusion: There is no device or drug powerful enough to counter the effects of poverty, pollution, stress, a broken food system, cities that aren’t walkable, and inequitable access to healthcare” - The New York Times, @NYTimes]
I give a lot of credit to my formal education for teaching me that health isn’t entirely biomedical and that healthcare is not just doctors, nurses, and hospitals. My hope for Invite Health, is that readers learn that healthcare is intersectional- it has “intersections” with every discipline you can think of (i.e. climate change, technology, entrepreneurship, education, policy, etc.). One of the reasons why i built Invite Health was to invite readers to learn about the various intersections of healthcare with other disciplines. Whether that’s through job opportunities or interviewing students who work at those intersections (like Shayan working in health science education, or Jenny working in global health)
Gateway > Gatekeep.
alt text: [tweet from Twitter: “My love language is forcing everyone to become obsessed with my current obsession so they suffer with me. I am the opposite of a gatekeeper. I am a gateway” - fran, @galacticidiots]
Focusing on the last two sentences of the tweet: “I am the opposite of a gatekeeper. I am a gateway.”
To be honest, I don’t completely understand gatekeeping culture. Why do people choose to post their achievements, but not share their journeys and be transparent about how they came about the opportunity? A lot of people, especially online, often share their achievements (i.e. all of the “I’m excited to announce” posts on LinkedIn), but “gatekeep” the process on how they achieve them. In my view, these posts create a narrative where these people with their achievements are on a “different level” from everyone else, and that there is this “hidden” or “secret” way to achieve these things (but only a few people are willing to share them). I will not say that no one is willing to share their experiences, because I know there are people out there who are transparent and open about their journeys. However, they are usually harder to find and there’s few.
I wish we would normalize being “gateways”, not “gatekeepers”. I value and strive for accessibility in all of the work that I do. That’s why Invite Health is called Invite Health. I want to invite everyone to learn and participate in healthcare, regardless of your background, experiences or knowledge.
In line with my values of accessibility, this is also why I promote paid jobs over unpaid positions. I’ve seen many of my friends committing to unpaid hours of work when they’re full-time students funding their education or doing work with little return. Being a student is expensive, especially if you are pursuing higher education (if you’re curious, look up the costs of the MCAT, CASPer, and OMSAS). I will always advocate for students and say that they deserve to be financially compensated for the work they do and the insight they provide to their teams, so they can support themselves and their goals.
Also, personal observation: this amount of unpaid work among students is not something I see in other fields, especially engineering or tech. I find that my peers in these fields are able to enter jobs without any formal experience, and still receive financial compensation. I’ve tried to come up with theories for why this is: maybe it’s because of their institution’s co-op programs, the funding of the companies they work at, or maybe it’s because they’re seen as more “employable”? Regardless of my theories, it will not change the fact that students aspiring to work in healthcare are negatively affected by unpaid work, and this cannot be the continued pattern. So, Invite Health will continue to promote paid opportunities for students.
How do you know you like something until you’ve done it?
alt text: [tweet from Twitter: “listened to @shaniabhopa last night talk about grad schools + career paths (and much more). One of the points she brought up was “how can you know you like something until you’ve done it” - whether it’s in regards to research, leadership, LSAT, or anything” - sachi (aka me), @nosachthing]
I listened in on a talk a while ago and the speaker talked about her career journey as a PhD student and nonprofit founder. She brought up this question, “how can you know you like something until you’ve done it?” And isn’t that true?
If myself, or any of my readers, are interested in working in a career pathway, shouldn’t they have tried it out before committing to it? For me, as I shared earlier, I thought that I wanted to be a doctor. I thought that was how I could make the biggest impact in healthcare, that it was something that I wanted to do with my skills and experiences. However, it wasn’t until I actually worked in hospitals and learned from doctors and medical students, that I realized that I did not want to become a doctor. And I’m grateful that this happened early on in my student journey, and not when I had already invested years and money into medical school. So, I hope that Invite Health can have this same effects for others. I hope that readers can participate in the opportunities that I share, and either be inspired to further pursue that field of interest, or learn early on that they are no longer interested in. There’s no better teacher than experience, is there?
Thank you for reading this all.
I hope that my story can resonate with you, and that I can continue building something special here at Invite Health.
I enjoyed writing this, so I’ll probably share more of these reflective pieces every once in a while. But don’t worry, I still have lots of exciting Invite Health content coming soon.
- Sachi
Here’s a cute Pikachu drawing, which represents me writing this for the past 2 hours, disregarding all other responsibilities…
