HPH NOWMiddle-School Friends Reunite Unexpectedly as MPH Students at HSPH
Mohan Sundararaj (left) gets reacquainted with Sanjeev Sriram.
Eighteen years ago, Mohan Sundararaj befriended Sanjeev Sriram, the new kid in his seventh-grade class at St. Michael’s Academy in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Two years later, Sriram moved with his parents to Los Angeles, and the fast friends lost touch.
Then this summer, MPH student Sundararaj quite unexpectedly picked out a familiar face at HSPH orientation.
“It hit me like a flash,” he said. “Do I know this person? Then I thought, ‘My goodness, that’s Sanjeev from seventh grade.’” So Sundararaj walked over and reintroduced himself. The reunited friends soon discovered that although their paths in life had diverged, they both shared a passion for public health.
Sundararaj is attending HSPH through a Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship. He is a doctor and an accomplished pianist. In fact, when he first came to Boston in 2001, it was to study music therapy at the Berklee College of Music.
He took his medical and musical skills to a residency program at Sri Ramachandra Medical College Hospital in Chennai. He then moved to Calcutta to work as a physician after completing his residency. There, he worked with orphaned girls from the streets of Calcutta. He empowered them to express themselves through music, he said, as a way to heal the scars of their traumatic lives. Having grown up in a relatively privileged environment, this experience helped him understand the needs of underserved segments of India’s population and inspired him to do more to help. By studying health care management at HSPH, Sundararaj hopes to “put the pieces of my work together” and develop a non-profit that will use evidence-based creative medicine to help India’s underprivileged communities, he said.
Sriram also attends HSPH on a fellowship — the Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellowship in Minority Health Policy. Like Sundararaj, Sriram has a medical degree and was chief resident in the UCLA Pediatrics Residency Program. After a “pretty grinding schedule” this summer, Sriram is looking forward to taking courses in economics; society and health; and leadership in minority health policy this fall, in addition to digging deeply into health policy from the angles of equity, leadership, and buy-in.
And, with any luck, these two health care policy and management experts-in-training may find their paths crossing again long after their graduation from HSPH, the site of a fun and thoroughly unexpected reunion.
-Amy Roeder. Photo by Suzanne Camarata.
