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Guilford Grad Sets Sights on Global Health Career

  • At age 2, Dishita Agarwal suffered her first episode stemming from an abnormality of her heart’s electrical system, which can result in seizures, fainting, and even death in young people.

    Surgeons implanted a cardioverter defibrillator - known as an ICD - just below her collarbone, and the device has saved her life seven times since.

    However, in an episode her sophomore year at the Early College at Guilford in Greensboro, N.C., Agarwal was knocked unconscious and suffered a brain injury, numbness, migraines, and fatigue. Recovery took five months, during which Agarwal sensed a lack of support from school officials. She posted on Instagram: “I hope I can use my pain to shed light on how combative the school system is towards people with medical conditions.”

    A 2024 graduate, Agarwal has been an advocate for herself - and other young people with medical issues - ever since.

    She has been named a youth health adviser with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, started the Empowering North Carolina Disabled Students Project, and was named the only teenager on an advisory committee of the Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs National Research Network.

    During an internship last summer at Duke University School of Medicine, she focused mainly on creating what she dubbed “cultural humility” guidelines for use in pediatric treatment, reflecting her awareness of a lack of disabled representation in children’s health care.

    Among her many achievements are more than 50 medals she has won at Science Olympiad events since elementary school. Her senior year, she had her own show on the school radio station - two hours each Thursday - called “To Be 18.”

    And, she recently was named a Presidential Scholar, one of 161 nationwide for the Class of 2024.

    In the fall, Agarwal plans to major in global heath and computer science at Duke University, with the aim of a career in public health.

    As she wrote in her personal statement on college applications, “[By] honoring both my pain and my resilience, I am unstoppable.”