About the Editor: Meghana Gadgil, MD, MPH—Preventative Nutrition Recommendations for South Asian Populations

India throughout her life.While she grew up in the New Jersey suburbs, her parents immigrated to New York City in the 1970s, her mother from the state of Maharashtra, her father from the city of Hyderabad."I used to go to India all the time as a kid to visit family.Being in a new place makes you observe things that you normally might not see.There are so many different foods and languages, which makes the communities very vibrant," she says."But there is also a lot of diabetes.And you don't know why.Everyone is fairly thin and active, yet it filtered through my whole family."Gadgil wanted to understand why a population that did not fit the typical diabetes mold was nevertheless at higher risk for developing type 2 diabetes.But this desire for understanding came later.While Gadgil was on the premed track during her undergraduate years at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, she did not realize that she wanted to pursue a career in medicine until after graduating."After college, I spent a year with AmeriCorps, with HealthCorps, as a WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) counselor in Seattle," she says."I worked with a population of pregnant women and women with kids to provide formative nutrition education."She attended medical school at New Jersey Medical School, which is now a