"Since Praava was founded in 2018, they have continuously strived to deliver convenient, affordable, and high-quality health care to the people of Bangladesh. They have quickly grown to be the largest private sector health care company in Bangladesh. Private sector services, such as Praava, have become vital to health care ecosystems across the globe. Praava guarantees that their licensed health care providers spend at least 15 minutes with their patients at every appointment. Besides in-person doctor consultations, patients can also conveniently access other health services available under the Praava umbrella, including pharmaceutical services, dental care, physiotherapy, and laboratory testing.

This summer I worked in the CEO’s office as a medical services Intern, helping to ensure the principles of quality and convenience on which Praava Health was founded. I collaborated with the marketing, information technology, customer complaint, and medical services teams. With the culmination of all these perspectives, I was able to create solutions and analyses over the course of my internship.

One of the primary projects I led was a collaboration between Praava Health and the Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF). In March 2020, Bangladesh detected its first case of SARS-CoV-2. Although cases subsided in the summer and fall of 2020, a surge in March 2021 conveyed the mutability and changing infectivity of this virus. During the most recent surge in Bangladesh, CHRF became the first to sequence SARS-CoV-2 in Bangladesh. In collaboration with Praava Health, CHRF was able to collect and sequence COVID-19 samples from across the divisions of Bangladesh. The goal of this collaboration was to expand knowledge surrounding the strains of COVID-19 within Bangladesh with the hope of improving prevention processes. My prior education in genetics, population health, and statistics all prepared me for this research project.

Prior to my internship with Praava, I had never seen the business side of health care. As a dental student, most of my previous experiences have been filled with research in the laboratory, studying anatomy and pharmacology, as well as practicing dental procedures. Due to my lack of business experience, there was a learning curve at the beginning of the summer. Some of my job was centered around giving clinical input on company-wide processes. However, other projects required a knowledge base of creating audits for medical services, as well as developing a more efficient process for patient complaints and root-cause analyses. Learning about these topics from the literature and communicating with the Praava team became essential those first few weeks at the company. Fortunately, the other interns and the entire Praava team were extremely helpful and excited to teach me about their expertise.

My internship with Praava offered me a glimpse of the other side of health care. Used to the operatories, procedures, and direct patient interactions, I had no previous knowledge of the business that drives health care. Not only did I learn how to design audits, script marketing materials, and perform root cause analyses, but I gleaned a perspective of how to create a health care company in a frontier market. Prior to Praava’s presence in Bangladesh, health care was quite limited, especially for marginalized populations. Praava Health has worked to provide this accessibility and quality to the health care sector in the country. In order to do so, Sylvana and her team truly built an infrastructure that has changed the way the Bangladeshi people view their health. It was a pleasure to be a part of Praava’s incredible mission this summer."