Photo: Pat Sargent
A team of students at UMass Chan Medical School is launching a new two-week immersive summer day camp for Worcester public high school students interested in careers in medicine.
MD CAMP (Community, Access, Mentorship and Purpose) is run by first- and second-year medical students from the T.H. Chan School of Medicine and fulfills the component of their medical school curriculum that is geared toward patient and community education. The camp program aims to diversify future medical school classes and expose students to careers in medicine.
The MD CAMP schedule includes lectures, guided patient interviews, physical exam skills, simulations through the UMass Chan Interprofessional Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation, and physician shadowing.
“The camp is targeting rising Worcester high school seniors and juniors who might be interested in medicine. We really want to give them a positive summer camp experience and show them the rigors of medical school,” second-year medical student Ananya Das said.
Das proposed creating the MD CAMP program to Robert E. Layne, MEd, assistant dean for outreach programs, in her first semester of medical school in 2024. Das said she was inspired by a similar “mini medical school experience” she participated in as an undergraduate student at The Ohio State University.
“The program at Ohio State was influential in my decision to pursue medicine. Seeing the impact that camp had on the local community made me want to bring that to Worcester,” Das said.
Second-year medical student Pamela Kote helped Das organize and develop the MD CAMP program. Kote, who is from Worcester, graduated from Doherty Memorial High School and the College of the Holy Cross.
“We want to show these students that a medical career is possible for them, and this is a space where they belong,” Kote said. “I think that this program will be a great way to give them a connection to medicine.”
Photo: Pat Sargent
Like Das, first-year medical student Sydney Warshaw attended a similar camp at Georgetown University School of Medicine as a high school student. Warshaw said her experience at that camp is what inspired her to apply to medical school. When she heard Das present her plans for MD CAMP, Warshaw was excited to be a part of it.
“As medical students, MD CAMP is the type of program that just makes sense to us,” Warshaw said. “We hope it gives [participants] a peek behind the curtain as to what happens here on campus and at the hospital and creates a connection that inspires them to enter the health care field and hopefully come back to be UMass Chan students,” she added.
MD CAMP was awarded a two-year Medical Student Service Leadership Project Grant from the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.
As part of the VISTA curriculum, medical students select a Pathway Program that gives them opportunities to explore areas of interest in-depth during their four years in medical school. The MD CAMP is a product of the Education Pathway, which encourages students to become active participants in medical education as strong science communicators and community advocates. The pathway is led by Alexandra Wink, PhD, associate professor of radiology.
MD CAMP is the longitudinal pathway project for Das, Kote and fellow second-year med students Ellis Barrera and Nikita Murli; and first-year students Warshaw, Carter Liou, Sho Kirihara and Grace Zhou, with support from second-year medical student Aaron Lee. Layne and Christine MacGinnis, DO, associate professor of medicine, serve as the group’s faculty advisors.
The camp is free and will run weekdays from July 6 to 17. The camp hopes to enroll 20 students and is accepting applications from students in the Worcester Public Schools system.
