The Meharry-Stanford Summer Research Program

What started in 2017 as a summer program for five visiting medical students has now transformed the lives of more than 30.

The idea for the Meharry-Stanford Summer Research Program was planted in Verghese’s mind when he visited Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. There he met with a former mentee, Stephanie McClure, MD, now senior associate dean of student academic affairs. Meharry is one of the historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States.

Part of the Meharry curriculum includes a summer placement at a campus of another medical school, where students explore new approaches to research and medicine. Most of the placements had been at campuses close to Nashville.

When Verghese learned about this opportunity for students, his immediate reaction was, “Why not at Stanford?” Not only would students be exposed to the unique depth of research and practice available at Stanford, but also they would experience a different environment, far from home, that could help open their minds to a wider world.

With the support and sponsorship of Department of Medicine chair Robert Harrington, MD, and vice chair of finance and administration Cathy Garzio, Presence and the Department of Medicine designed a program to engage Meharry students in current research at Stanford and to build a strong connection between the two institutions.

Verghese recalls that it was a mentor he had when he was a student who saw something in him that he didn’t see in himself. That support was what motivated him to go further in his studies. “That was a powerful lesson, and one I try to fulfill with our Meharry students: to help students understand what they can become.”

“Long-term, some Meharry students may join us in the future as residents or faculty,” says Verghese. “But even if they don’t, my hope is that their experience here will transform their lives in some way.” He notes that many Meharry students have come a long distance to make it through the ever-narrowing pipeline that brought them to medical school. “I’m in awe of them,” he says. “They have a lot to teach us, and getting to know them has been a humbling experience.”

In 2017, the program began in the Department of Medicine. With the collaborative leadership of Israni; Florette K. Gray Hazard, MD, associate professor of pathology and of pediatrics; and Payam Massaband, MD, clinical associate professor of radiology, it now includes the departments of radiology and pathology. And though the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the 2021 session to take place virtually, it offered placements for 23 students.

Two Meharry-Stanford Program Alums Pursue Their Dreams

The 5-Minute Moment for Racial Justice

The 5-Minute Moment for Racial Justice is a new curriculum that promotes racial justice and health equity during patient bedside interactions. It is built and being investigated as a set of modules to be implemented during teaching rounds.

“The United States has deep history around race and racism,” comments Samantha Wang, MD, clinical assistant professor of hospital medicine and the leader of this effort. “Many of my colleagues reached a tipping point in 2020, when we started having conversations in what I call ‘brave spaces’ and spending time sitting with discomfort,” Wang says. “We may have been aware that health care was not necessarily equitable or fair, but we hadn’t stopped to understand how we might have been contributing to these disparities or consider what we could do to prevent them from continuing.”

Samantha Wang, MD (center) is the leader of the 5-Minute Moment for Racial Justice program, designed to promote racial justice and health equity during interactions with patients. Residents Thomas Savage, MD (left) and Jaspreet Pannu, MD (right) worked with Dr. Wang on the program

Presence 5 for Racial Justice

In a time when medicine is dominated by technology—such as electronic health records, telemedicine, remote monitoring, and machine learning—is it any surprise that the sacred doctor-patient relationship is under duress? Doctor visits that were once central to clinical care are now at times perfunctory and mutually unsatisfying. Add racial bias to the mix—often unconscious but sometimes not—and you’re facing a problem that adversely affects a huge swath of our population.

Stanford aims to address this challenge by using communication tools that will help clinicians build trusting relationships with Black and other marginalized patient populations.

Working with a team of diverse advisers from four community health care centers around the country, the group developed materials to help deploy these concepts across the medical training spectrum, from medical students through practicing clinicians at every level.

“Our goal is to identify specific communication strategies and practices that clinicians can use to address racism that affects their patients’ health and well-being,” says Zulman. “Whatever we learn will need to be implemented together with structural and systemic interventions.”

Zulman is the principal investigator for the umbrella Presence 5 for Racial Justice project. While she is pleased by the progress made so far, she recognizes that they are tackling “a very complicated problem with deep historical roots.” She does not think this research will offer the sole answer to the problem, but she is hopeful that her team’s findings will help foster conversations that ultimately lead to more equitable and racially just care.