Clinica Medica Moscati founder Mayra Short said the small clinic on Lowe Avenue relies mostly on large nonprofit groups to keep its pharmacy stocked, but Donate Ur Meds is an important secondary resource. The clinic also receives grant funding from Huntsville Hospital’s Community Health Initiative.

“What Adi has done is impactful and significant,” Short says. “To me, it’s just very refreshing to see a young person take an interest in helping others.”

Teen spirit

Adi started Donate Ur Meds in 2022 during his freshman year at Randolph School, before he was old enough to drive.

Not surprisingly, his favorite story about the program involves another teenager – a boy from a local immigrant family trying to manage his Type 1 diabetes with limited English and no health insurance.

“Type 1 diabetes is a challenge in itself, but it was twice as complicated for him,” Adi says. “He was hospitalized several times with diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening complication of untreated diabetes.”

Now that the teen has access to free insulin and supplies to monitor his blood sugar levels, he is staying healthy and out of the hospital.

Adi also likes that Donate Ur Meds is helping the environment.

Each year, billions of dollars’ worth of unwanted prescription drugs and over-the-counter medication is tossed in the trash and flushed down toilets. Wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove pharmaceutical chemicals, so they end up in America’s rivers, lakes and streams.

Wanted: diabetic meds

Currently, Donate Ur Meds has six secure collection boxes across Huntsville and Madison and one in Hartselle where anyone can drop off unwanted, unopened prescription drugs. Just about any non-narcotic medication (in liquid or pill form) is accepted, along with medical supplies.

Adi’s physician parents – mother Vasudha Reddy, a Huntsville Hospital endocrinologist, and father Madan Gowda, a kidney specialist at Nephrology Consultants LLC – have been instrumental to the program’s success by helping with pickups and deliveries and accepting donated items at their offices.

Dr. Reddy, who also volunteers at Clinica Medica Moscati and the Community Free Clinic, says diabetic medications and supplies are an ongoing need. Alabama has one of the nation’s highest rates of Type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity and physical inactivity.

So far, Donate Ur Meds has been able to supply the clinics with about 1,000 new insulin pens along with glucometers, test strips, oral diabetes medications like Jardiance and Ozempic – even insulin pumps which cost about $6,000 apiece.

The entire community wins, says Dr. Reddy, when uninsured people with chronic illnesses get the treatment they need to avoid expensive hospitalizations.

 “Adi still thinks of himself as just the driver” for Donate Ur Meds, she said. “But he is starting to see the importance.

 “It was such a small, simple idea that’s having a huge impact.”