Rajiv Kumar has become a familiar face across Rhode Island because of his nonprofit Shape Up RI project, which has made fitness a community affair, drawing friends and co-workers into teams that competed and shared their achievements.

Last year, Kumar and fellow Brown University medical student Brad Weinberg won the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition as well as a new state innovation tax credit with a business-oriented version of this concept: Shape Up The Nation, a project of their new Providence Health Solutions LLC. (READ MORE) Since then, they have signed up more than 100 clients across the country and continued to expand their offerings.

PBN: How is Shape Up The Nation similar to or different from Shape Up RI?

KUMAR: It shares the same philosophy, which is that bringing people together within a trusted social network is the best way to promote healthy lifestyles and lasting behavior change. But Shape Up The Nation is focused on bringing this concept to work sites across the country.

PBN: What does a company get when it signs up?

KUMAR: We provide an online wellness portal, branded if they choose, through which their employees can access the Shape Up team-based fitness challenge or create their own challenges, group events, exercise plans … so colleagues can challenge each other to lose 10 pounds, quit smoking or walk 10,000 steps a day. They can share their exercise plans. … They can also create groups of peers with similar interests.

PBN: So it can be driven by the individuals and not just the organization?

KUMAR: We say this is an employee-driven wellness program. ... The idea is that you can give employees what they want by letting them take control and design programs that are relevant to their lifestyle and to the people that they’re interested in working with. … The employer can get things started by launching a challenge [such as the 12-week, team-based weight loss challenge] … but beyond that, we allow employees to create their own challenges.

PBN: You have a white paper citing research that supports this concept. But did you launch this based on research?

KUMAR: I always start from personal experience. My own experience shows me that I’m more likely to go to the gym when I have an exercise buddy. [I’m] more likely to play a sport when I’m on a team. More likely to eat healthy if the people around me also choose healthy foods. … We had a hunch that this model would work … and now there’s research coming out of Framingham that shows people gain and lose weight in clusters, that people have a tremendous amount of influence on their friends’ and colleagues’ health. … We’ve done a study on our model with Dr. Rena Wing at the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center [at Brown and Lifespan], and we hope to publish the results early next year.

PBN: Why do it online?

KUMAR: An online program is both scalable and affordable. It’s an easy way to reach a large population, and it’s very cost-effective. … So the idea is that we can reach more people, it fits into their lifestyle, it makes it easy for them to recruit [partners] and also to track what they’re doing, which provides accountability and structure.

PBN: You have built a new social-networking platform. How much have you modeled this on existing networks, and how much have you designed from scratch?

KUMAR: There’s been a boom in social-networking Web sites in the consumer space – Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Twitter. … Our model is similar but it’s focused on connecting people around wellness. And we’re building an action-based platform, meant to facilitate offline activity, whereas a Facebook or a MySpace is meant for people to read about each other, share photos and participate in online activities.

PBN: How many clients do you have, and how big do you think you can get?

KUMAR: We have more than 100 clients throughout North America. Some of our major clients include UPS, the Cleveland Clinic, the St.-Gobain Corp., CVS Caremark Corp. … we’ve had more than 30,000 participants, and we’re projecting over 250,000 participants in the next year. … Workplace wellness is a $1 billion-a-year industry, and it’s projected to grow 30 percent annually over the next few years.

PBN: You have been adding new capabilities over time. What’s next?

KUMAR: The next evolution is to be able to deliver specific programs tailored to a specific employee’s needs, interests and health conditions. So we can build modules for smoking cessation, nutrition, personal health coaching, disease management, but the key is first to get people using the platform, leveraging it to improve their health. … Then we can use it to deliver content education and additional program modules. … [We’re] creating partnerships with providers who currently offer these tools. And we’re also integrating an incentive module where employees can earn incentives provided by their employer.

PBN: How well is this working as a business?

KUMAR: One of the key differentiators is that our revenue model is not dependent on advertising dollars, because employers are willing to pay for this as part of their benefit package. … So we make money from Day One, as opposed to having to reach a critical mass of people.

PBN: You took a break from medical school to do this. Do you plan to go back?

KUMAR: Absolutely. My dream has been to be a doctor since I was a child … but this is a very interesting stop along the journey, and I’m enjoying every bit of it. •

Kumar has been honored as one of Yankee Magazine’s five “Angels Among Us, 2007” (READ MORE) and ranked among Providence Business News’s 2008 40 Under Forty (READ MORE) for his role as chairman and founder of statewide nonprofit Shape Up RI.