Summer Research Fellowship Program for Podiatric Medical Students

ABSTRACT The proposal entitled “Summer Research Fellowship Program for Podiatric Medical Students” is a short-term training grant involving pre-doctoral podiatric medical students in biomedical research. An estimated 37.3 million Americans (11.3% of the population) have diabetes, a serious, life-long condition. Foot pathology is one of the most common complications associated with diabetes and podiatrists are often the first-in-line clinicians seen by patients with diabetes. As it is a relatively young discipline, podiatry has not developed institutionalized research in most of its schools and training institutions. Subsequently, podiatric medical students are traditionally under- represented in research careers but provide a large pool of available talent that could be recruited in biomedical science research. This is especially true in the field of diabetes. The Summer Research Fellowship Program exposes first-year podiatric medical student to interprofessional research across numerous disciplines and is often their first exposure to biomedical research. The program also provides an inclusive professional community where students can develop the skills and mentorship required for research success. The overall goal of the training program is to increase the number of podiatric medical students entering careers in the biomedical sciences. We seek to achieve this goal by pursuing the following aims/objectives: 1. Provide podiatric students with individual hands-on experiences in scientific research through mentorship from an active researcher and/or joining an existing research center at RFUMS. 2. Provide a collaborative research environment that combines experts in basic science, clinical, and translational research, in order to optimally address individual student interests. 3. Provide podiatric students with an ongoing research support network and opportunity to maintain involvement in research over the course of their academic medical career. 4. Provide podiatric students with educational training in data collection and analysis, scientific writing, and oral presentation of research, and responsible conduct in research. 5. Provide podiatric students with opportunities to explore career options in medical research through interactions with mentors, other faculty, and prior trainees. 6. Foster a sense of belonging to a community of like-minded scientists among the trainees After completion of the summer research program, podiatric medical student have opportunities to continue their work in one of several interprofessional programs offered by the college including the dual DPM-PhD degree program.