{"id":7872,"date":"2019-10-07T08:57:25","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T12:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=7872"},"modified":"2023-01-09T11:25:52","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T16:25:52","slug":"socializing-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/socializing-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"Socializing Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

You\r\nmight say entrepreneurship runs in Gillian Shaw\u2019s family. Her grandmother\r\nopened one of the first nail salons in New Jersey, and her father started his\r\nown company on Wall Street. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

But it was science\u2014not business\u2014that was on Shaw\u2019s mind as an\r\nundergrad. After graduating from Monmouth in 2012 with a degree in chemistry,\r\nshe earned a master\u2019s in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame. Realizing\r\nshe didn\u2019t want to spend her life in a lab, she then enrolled in the university\u2019s\r\nentrepreneurship in STEM program with a goal of using her science background in\r\ncombination with new ideas in business to help others. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

That\u2019s what she does now as a program director for enFocus, a nonprofit\r\norganization in South Bend, Indiana, that works to at- tract and develop\r\nentrepreneurial talent across two counties in the state. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cWe want to spark innovation and entrepreneurship by pairing\r\nyoung, talented people with meaningful projects in the com- munity,\u201d says Shaw.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

While most of Shaw\u2019s time is spent working with budding entrepreneurs\r\non their business plans, her role also gives her time to work on other projects\r\nshe\u2019s passionate about. In Shaw\u2019s case, that\u2019s an app called Healthy Points,\r\nwhich she co-founded with colleague Andrew Wiand. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Healthy Points empowers at- risk pregnant women to make healthy\r\ndecisions by utilizing HIPAA-secure technology that allows the women to communicate\r\nwith each other as well as with health care providers. Users can post photos of\r\nthem- selves participating in healthy behaviors\u2014like drinking water\u2014and earn\r\npoints that can be redeemed for items such as diapers and clothing for newborns.\r\nAs of late August, over 200 people\u2014including patients and health professionals\u2014have\r\nutilized the app. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Shaw and Wiand saw a great need to address women\u2019s health during\r\npregnancy, especially the health of at-risk populations, who tend to have more\r\ncomplicated deliveries. According to Shaw, these women\u2014often from low-income,\r\nlow-education, and socially disadvantaged groups\u2014 have traditionally been hard\r\nto reach by health systems, in part because they have felt marginalized and\r\nunderserved, which leads to a mistrust of the medical community. But these women\r\nalso experience other obstacles that can keep them from engaging in their own\r\nhealth, such as unstable home environments, living in a food desert, or lacking\r\ntransportation. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cIf you put yourself in these women\u2019s shoes,\u201d says Shaw, \u201cyou\r\ncan see how you might make a decision to cancel your doctor\u2019s appointment to\r\npick up an extra shift at work so you can make rent. Or maybe you\u2019ve been\r\nevicted, so you place a priority on establishing a safe place to sleep.\u201d <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Through Shaw\u2019s app, health care providers can engage these women\r\ndigitally, and the women themselves can feel empowered to make a healthy change\r\nin their lives. During a Healthy Points focus group, Shaw spoke with one woman\r\nwho saw someone else post about replacing soda with sparkling water. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cAnd the woman thought, \u2018I could do that!\u2019 Seeing the other\r\nperson\u2019s post enabled her to make a switch as well,\u201d says Shaw. \u201cAnd when\r\nyou\u2019re talking about women who are diabetic while they\u2019re pregnant, a soda to a\r\nsparkling water is a huge shift. It really makes a big difference.\u201d <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For now, Healthy Points has been growing through intro- ductions\r\nfrom current clients. But Shaw hopes to eventually integrate the app with\r\nelectronic medical records to reduce the burden on physicians, and by doing so,\r\ngreatly expand its reach to the lives of pregnant women across the United\r\nStates. \u201cThat\u2019s the big vision,\u201d she says. \u201cThat might be five or 10 years down\r\nthe road, but within the next year or two, I hope we can expand our network to\r\nall of Indiana.\u201d <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n

Just go for it<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n

As a program director with enFocus, Shaw spends a lot of time with budding entrepreneurs, helping them to write business plans or secure funding for their projects. Her advice if you have your own project that you want to get o the ground? Just go for it. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cOne of the things I\u2019ve seen with entrepreneurs is that they\u2019re scared to take that last step,\u201d says Shaw. \u201cBut there\u2019s never a case where you 100% know it\u2019s going to work. You\u2019re always taking a little bit of a risk\u2014entrepreneurship is risky. But my advice is to just take the chance. Failure is a success in some ways because you learn a lot. You\u2019ll be OK. I promise.\u201d <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gillian Shaw’s app takes prenatal care into the digital age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":7875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\\\"x\\\":50,\\\"y\\\":20}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-back"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"The Back","issue":"Fall 2019","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7872"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8213,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872\/revisions\/8213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}