Cohen Champions Treatment, Technology
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
March 10, 2014
Abby Cohen was looking for a problem to solve.
Two years later, she’s potentially only one more year from helping relieve a medical dilemma faced by 25 million Americans.
And the most impressive part might be that she graduated from high school a mere five years ago and is 23 years old.
Cohen, a 2009 MHSAA Scholar-Athlete Award winner as a senior at Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood, certainly could be called proactive, going back to her days as a volleyball, basketball and soccer standout for the Cranes. Less than a year after graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., she’s co-founder and co-CEO of Sparo Labs, which seeks to provide asthma sufferers with a proactive way of monitoring their symptoms and improving their treatments.
“Everyone has a different perspective on how to go about doing things,” Cohen said. “For me, growing up trying to improve in sports, I’d write down a list of things to do every day and actually do them, follow through. That aspect of always wanting to get better, and improve, is something that’s carried through to the rest of what we do at Sparo and in general how I approach things.”
On March 22, the MHSAA and Farm Bureau Insurance will recognize a 25th class of Scholar-Athlete Award winners. In advance of the celebration, Second Half has caught up with some of the hundreds who have been recognized (see additional links at the bottom of this page).
Cohen, who also served on the MHSAA Student Advisory Council from 2007-09, chose Washington based on its strong engineering problem and successful women’s basketball program. She studied bio-medical engineering and was a freshman on the Bears team that defeated Hope College for the Division III national championship in 2010.
But that first season was followed by a series of ankle injuries that required reconstructive surgery – and, effectively, ended her collegiate sports career. She still can play pick-up games, but four-hour daily practices and the other commitments of a varsity program would've been too much.
She missed basketball. But the end of her competitive career on the court, as it turned out, allowed more time to dive into a new pursuit – and, in her words, “work with another kind of team.”
“I’m a big believer in everything happens for a reason,” Cohen said. “It was disappointing having to have surgery to make everything feel better, for the long term, not just basketball. For me at that time, I didn't appreciate that with the extra time I could have, I could take the time to try new things, make the world a better place.”
Cohen planned at first to eventually become a physician. She shadowed a number of doctors, but decided that in the long run she could have a greater impact as an engineer designing products physicians could use.
In addition to her classwork, she helped form an extracurricular entrepreneurial group – and set out for an issue in need of repair. She and her now-business partner Andrew Brimer didn't realize how many Americans are affected by asthma, “that respiratory diseases are the only ones getting worse over time rather than getting better. That although technology is improving, why it’s not making a dent.”
They set out find out and make that dent themselves.
Through a series of interviews with patients, doctors, respiratory therapists and others in the field, Cohen and Brimer got an idea what could help – an affordable, easy-to-use device to allow patients to monitor on their own their symptoms so they can better manage them and the treatments to help. Cohen and Brimer designed a device that plugs into a smart phone and allows patients to blow into it like a whistle and register lung function readings – while also collecting data on medications, pollen counts, and other variables that affect lung function. Their device also should dent the health care costs that go with current testing, which generally requires an office visit.
Sparo will work over the next six months to improve its app interface and user experience, and then submit for Food and Drug Administration approval at the end of this year or the beginning of 2015 – with the hope it will then become available to patients later next spring.
Cohen is based in St. Louis, where she and Brimer have been able to work with three large local hospitals and within a nurturing entrepreneurial community. Brimer's brother owns a tech education company in New York which has provided additional support as she and Brimer discussed what was possible. “We were talking to patients and physicians, and it just seemed like the right thing to do,” Cohen said. “If we weren’t going to do this, who was?”
Cohen and Brimer have won 9 of 11 entrepreneurship grant competitions they've entered, netting more than $300,000 to get their lab rolling and allow them to hire two more engineers. Long-term, today’s work could just be the start of what Cohen hopes eventually will reach into developing countries as well.
She remains in touch with a number of teachers at Cranbrook-Kingswood – also, her mother Sheila Cohen teaches sixth-grade math at the school – and she spoke there at the end of 2013 as part of a TEDx event.
As she continues to build her team, Cohen is reminded of additional lessons she learned on the courts and soccer field – including a major one that will continue to pay as Sparo expands.
“Learning how to work on a team, with really different personalities, different people who all play different roles,” Cohen said. “That really came from sports – the ability to work with people and reach one common goal.”
Click to read the series' first installments:
- 25 Years Later, Scholar Athletes Shine On
- On Call as Doctor, Director, Mom
- "Mailloux Management" Goes Global
- Goorhouse Gives Back at Home
PHOTO: Abby Cohen (10) helps her teammates hoist a trophy while a player at Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Cranbrook-Kingswood.)
St. Johns Cheers Section Success
February 10, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
ST. JOHNS – The low point might’ve come two years ago, when St. Johns student leaders planned a holiday theme for a boys basketball game.
Alex Davis showed up in a Christmas sweater. Only four of her classmates dressed to match.
That same year, the school’s newly-formed Student Athletic Leadership Committee created a calendar for the winter highlighting theme nights and other games they hoped would draw a big student crowd. The calendar was gone by the next day, torn down by older students who wanted to continue doing their own thing – which generally included yelling at referees or the other team, and not always in the most flattering ways.
Before St. Johns could compete to be called the state’s best student section, the SALC had to convince their classmates there was a better way.
And finally, this winter, they’ve broken through thanks to a blueprint other student leaders would be wise to follow.
“It’s something where you have to be able to have a voice and you have to be able to want to make the change and want to make the difference,” Davis said. “Because you can go to all of these meetings and do everything. But at the end of the day, if you don’t want to do it, there’s no way you’re going to carry it out and help other people to do it.”
St. Johns hosted the fourth stop Friday of this year’s MHSAA Battle of the Fans IV finalists tour. The MHSAA also has visited Beaverton, Yale and Buchanan and will journey to Dowagiac on Friday, with the naming of this year’s champion Feb. 20.
The public may vote for its favorite on the MHSAA’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram sites beginning Feb. 17, with the MHSAA Student Advisory Council taking results into consideration when selecting the champion after the vote has concluded.
St. Johns’ appearance in the contest wasn’t a thought in the fall. But a spot among the final five might not mean more to any of the contenders. More than 200 students rooted on the Redwings’ basketball teams Friday – a testament to the work that’s been done and the changes that have been made as the section has been transformed.
Athletic director Chris Ervin started the Student Athletic Leadership Committee during the fall of 2012 after a group of students attended an MHSAA Sportsmanship Summit in Lansing that focused in part on the previous winter’s inaugural Battle of the Fans competition.
At that point, St. Johns students generally showed up for games, at least for the football and boys basketball teams. But there wasn’t a lot of cheering, or cheering in the most positive way.
The committee came back from the Summit with great ideas. But a group of then-seniors already was in place as leaders of the section – and the SALC’s entrance into the conversation was mostly ignored.
The SALC was created in large part to lead the student section toward more positivity, sportsmanship, inclusion of all grades. After this football season, the committee was close to giving up.
“If everyone is against us, why are we trying to force something upon them that they don’t want?” St. Johns junior Jake Eaton recalled asking. “If we were going to just bring negativity, we didn’t want to do that.”
“Standing up for this group, standing up for what we’re doing, was the hardest thing,” junior Jessica Hafner said, “and the best thing.”
The SALC again attended an MHSAA Sportsmanship Summit, in November in Grand Rapids. They again came back with plenty of ideas – and a stronger, more experienced group to push them through.
The original SALC was 12 students, three from each grade. The committee invited three more from the rest of the student body.
“At first, it came (across) like we were trying to take over the student section. We weren’t trying to take it over. We were just trying to make it more positive,” Davis said. “We invited some of those people in our group. That won them over. We got them in, changed their ways, and they went to their friends. It’s worked.”
The SALC got its message out to a school-wide captive audience by holding a pep rally before the boys and girls games against DeWitt on Dec. 12. That allowed the SALC to show off their new philosophy – and some new cheers – to the entire school, which in turn got some younger students interested who might not have showed before.
The SALC then took advantage of a key opportunity. In St. Johns’ league, the Capital Area Activities Conference, the boys varsity basketball teams play first on Friday nights, followed by the girls. The students who weren’t embracing the changes usually left after the boys games – leaving the SALC to work with those who stayed to cheer on the girls.
It was at those games that the new section began gaining a foothold. Applying to Battle of the Fans, and the excitement after students saw the video, gave the SALC’s effort another boost.
“At first, we struggled to get participation,” said senior Austin Ervin, who stays after his basketball games to lead the section. “Once we got coordinated cheers that were fun and everybody realized what it was like to have fun and be positive and not just scream at the officials and teams, I think people started talking at school; ‘You should come to this. It’s a good time.’”
The student attendance at girls games continued to grow during the first half of this season, and the section’s new setup transferred to the boys games. St. Johns filled a section with high schoolers and nearly another with middle schoolers for Friday’s against Haslett; although a few rows at the top emptied, the majority of the crowd stayed to cheer on the girls. The section also has made an appearance at a wrestling match to cheer on a team that has won four MHSAA titles over the last five seasons.
Hafner, a basketball player, said the support is definitely making a difference on the court; the boys basketball team, at 7-7, is on pace to equal last season’s record, but the girls team, at 10-6, already has surpassed its 2013-14 win total.
St. Johns’ student section has come a long way in a short time, but the potential for growth seems limitless in a school of nearly 1,100 students. There’s a buzz in the halls and plans for the future now that changes have finally gotten started.
“I grew up in high school only knowing this (negative) stuff,” Eaton added. “Once we all matured in this situation, we have this year and next year and wanted to push it through and get it going before we left. Seeing how we came together for that video, it was definitely worth it, definitely something we could push for that next year and try to do better.”
PHOTOS: (Top) St. Johns students cheer during Friday's boys basketball game against Haslett. (Middle) The Redwings' student section reached to the top row while filling one full section and part of another of the school's gym. (Bottom) A trio of students energize their classmates with back flips Friday. (Photos courtesy of Jack Heckaman/jaxxphotos.com.)