Stephen C. Shannon, DO, MPH
President

Reflections on Today's Pre-Med Students

I recently had the opportunity to speak at a pre-med/pre-public health student event at the University of California-Davis (UC-Davis) campus. “The 7th Annual Pre-Medical and Pre-Public Health Conference” was sponsored by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) at American River College (ARC) Pre-Med Chapter and the AMSA at UC-Davis Pre-Med Chapter. ARC is a California Community College with student enrollment of around 35,000 full- and part-time students. Its AMSA chapter has been at the forefront of creating a recognized pathway for students in community colleges that encourages them to envision a career as a physician. In 2008, 41 percent of first-time college students were enrolled in a community college, representing a huge potential boon to the future health care workforce.

ARC AMSA created this student-run conference in 2002, and AACOM has been participating in the growing event for five years. This was the first year the conference was held at UC-Davis, a logical partner given its close proximity to ARC (both in the greater Sacramento area) and the fact that a number of ARC students transfer to UC-Davis to complete their pre-medical education. There were more than 2,500 students at the event!

Osteopathic medical education (OME) is a pathway that is increasingly recognized by California’s pre-medical students. Last year, students from five of the University of California campuses (Los Angeles, Davis, Irvine, San Diego and Berkley) were in the top 20 undergraduate college cohorts applying to osteopathic medical schools (there were 111 applicants from UC-Davis alone). Likewise, these five campuses were in the top 20 of sources for matriculants at osteopathic medical colleges (62 from UC-Davis). In 2008, a little over 10 percent of matriculating osteopathic medical students originated from California.

While these numbers are significant, I was struck by several things during my visit to UC-Davis:

• When asked by the moderator how many in the audience were familiar with osteopathic medicine, only about 20 percent raised their hands.
• The students I encountered were highly motivated, idealistic and eager for information about osteopathic medical education.
• The student audience was very diverse (the majority of ARC students are classified as non-white). My non-scientific observation was that the population in the room where I spoke looked like the U.S. population will look in 30-35 years, when a majority will be non-white. We know that a needed factor in achieving high-quality health care in the United States is a physician workforce that reflects the make-up of the U.S. population it serves. Osteopathic medicine (and all health professions, in fact) needs to be doing a much better job than we are in this regard.  
• Those present did not come only from ARC or UC-Davis, but from a variety of locations in the western United States.
• While clearly more work needs to occur to get the message out about the value of osteopathic medicine in health care delivery, as well as about OME as a pathway to becoming a physician, students want to know about OME. In addition to Gina Moses, AACOM’s chief recruiter, there were a number of other representatives of DO schools present. Well-attended workshops were held on osteopathic medicine, the AACOMAS application process and other areas of interest to pre-medical students. For a full look at the program: http://conference.amsaarc.org/download/amsaarc_con09_program.pdf.
• The event was student-planned and student-run. It reflected student questions and ‘want-to-know-about’ topics. It was organized completely on-line, supported itself through registration fees ($40 per student), and succeeded in demonstrating to many community college students a pathway from community college to four-year degree to medical school.
• I was particularly happy to have met the person responsible for the founding and ongoing evolution of the event: Joubin Afshar, former ARC student and currently a Senior Emergency Trauma Technician at UC-Davis Medical Center. Although he clearly had a large contingent of collaborators in creating the event, everyone I talked with gave him the credit for the idea and the implementation that led 2,500 students interested in pre-med and pre-public health to attend this remarkable event.