Promoting Regional Campus Excellence: The Scholarly Concentrations Program at Indiana University School of Medicine

While Indiana University School of Medicine has had multiple regional campuses delivering the pre-clerkship phase of the education for 50 years, since 2008, all four years of medical education, including clinical, have also been available at the eight regional campuses statewide. While 67 percent of admitted students designate a preference for the Indianapolis main campus, 60 percent of students are assigned to a regional campus for pre-clerkship education. Of those, 32 percent chose to be at their assigned campus. Students are often not able to identify a compelling reason to choose a regional campus. Despite data to the contrary, including our own, a majority of students continue to believe the path to success is through the main campus in Indianapolis, and as a result, transfer to the main campus for clerkships. In 2019, the school launched a Scholarly Concentrations Program as a key strategy to address this problem. The program leverages the unique expertise and resources at its diverse campuses and shines a spotlight on them to attract and retain students at regional campuses through educational enhancement and engaged community scholarship. While still in pilot phase, significant progress has been realized. With faculty statewide, 11 concentrations launched in less than one year; 17 in two years. About 220 students are enrolled in concentrations statewide; about half at regional campuses. A special program through the admissions process resulted in 9 percent of the Class of 2024, with an average GPA of 3.8 and 512 MCAT, choosing to enroll at a regional campus and its associated scholarly concentration. Immediate plans revolve around supporting concentration growth, building systems and processes to support a sustainable program, and monitoring results of the three pilot phases to inform future development and implementation. In addition, students are being recruited to regional campuses through an Early Decision Program.

Outcomes from an elective medical student Research Scholarly Concentration program

To examine how to increase research career outcomes among medical graduates, we analyzed the impact of the Research Scholarly Concentration at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Residency placement, subsequent scholarship, and career outcomes were compared among 670 graduates who participated in the elective Clinical and Translational Research Scholarly Concentration or no Concentration between 2009 and 2018. We conducted a retrospective study of residency match (highly selective vs less selective), job type (academic vs non-academic), and postmedical school publications (any vs none). We compared the outcomes between Research Scholarly Concentration graduates and those with no Concentration, matched by graduation year (n=335). For Research Scholarly Concentration graduates, we examined the association between research outcomes and duration of research experience before medical school (n=232). Research Scholarly Concentration graduates were more likely to place in a highly selective residency (40.2% vs 21.6%, p<0.0001), 68% more likely to publish after medical school (OR=1.68, 95% CI 1.10 to 2.58), and almost four times as likely to have taken an academic health center job (OR=3.82, 95% CI 1.72 to 8.46) than graduates with no Concentration. Surprisingly, the length of research experience before medical school was not associated with these outcomes among Research Scholarly Concentration graduates. This suggests that a medical school Research Scholarly Concentration is effective in training physician researchers and should be available to both novices and research-experienced matriculants. These data suggest how other medical schools might plan Scholarly Concentration programs to improve research outcomes among medical graduates.