Interdisciplinary

The Graduate Professional Council (GPC) is made up of 1-2 representatives from each professional school at Wash U (medicine, law, business, etc). We meet once a month on the undergrad campus to discuss solutions to issues facing our professional student population (such as childcare and transportation) and also organize large events to foster relationships between the schools! It’s a great way to get involved and see how you fit into the larger Wash U bubble!

The mission of Health Economics and Policy Interest Group/Students for a National Health Program (HEPIG/SNaHP) is to bring educational opportunities, awareness, and robust discussion on topics that drive the field of medicine and health care, but that our classmates may not get time to learn or interface with otherwise during their medical educations. We have a refreshing amount of flexibility on the different topics we can cover, so feel free to hit that submit button for our leadership board! Past events include a health economics primer, comparing health delivery systems (U.S. vs. other countries), a social worker panel discussing financial barriers, advocating for implementing Medicare expansion, and debating dialysis policy. Future events include dual-degree panels, intro talks, and more!

Hippocrene is WUSM’s premier literary and arts journal. We accept submissions from all students within graduate programs at WUSM and publish once annually. In addition to circulating throughout the Medical Campus, our print issues are distributed to all prospective medical students during their interviews.

Did you ever take a French class? Are you interested in French culture, or simply international health as a whole? Medical French (MedFrench) would love to have you! No matter your French language level, you are welcome to join us for sessions that span such wide topics as French health care, nutrition, and film festivals! It’s a great opportunity for anyone interested in the culture to learn more, as well as for those who do speak the language to keep practicing with speakers of all proficiencies.

MedSpan is a student-lead, Spanish learning program that encourages students to improve their communication skills with Spanish-speaking patients. WashU offers resources that students have access to as they’re preparing for their certification test, and covers the cost. This also serves as a great way to learn from and about other members of the WashU community while making you better equipped to serve underrepresented individuals in the community.

While most med students pursue clinical, basic, or translational research at Washington University School of Medicine, there are definitely opportunities for research beyond these fields, like in public health/health equity, bioethics, policy, and education. The research itself is loads of fun! I myself do bioethics/philosophy research with Dr. Jay Malone, which involves lots of reading and writing (and publishing!) about topics like loneliness, patient-physician relationships, and moral obligations over wine. In the EXPLORE segment of the Gateway Curriculum, there are pathways — i.e., faculty mentors, resources, and training — in these areas, and Dean Chung is such a God about providing information about current research projects and faculty in those areas. It might be a bit more difficult to access a non-clinical/basic science research project perfectly aligned with your interests, so you may have to look around and proactively reach out to faculty with a similar project. But, way more likely than not, you’ll most likely receive a super positive response, and you can definitely find your research niche here at Wash U.

Sling Health is WashU’s biotech/health-tech startup accelerator that offers students up to $5000 in funding to start a venture while in medical school. Sling gives students the opportunity to work with students across all of WashU’s schools and to get feedback on their venture from physicians, professors, and successful entrepreneurs in the St. Louis startup and venture community. Sling allows students to work on their venture longitudinally throughout the entirety of their med school career, as a Sling project can be brought into Explore through the Innovation (or Research!) pathway. Sling has also allowed me and other team leads to travel to conferences in Honolulu, Austin, and Ann Arbor to network with other students interested in technology and entrepreneurship. As well, Sling has given me the opportunity to liaison with organizations such as the American Medical Association and with venture capitalists across the country to expand the network of physician-innovators. Regardless of whether or not you have any finance/business experience coming into medical school, Sling is an incredible way to learn the basics and work on a cool project in your free time (can promise that building something is more fun than just grinding Anki day in and day out) and think about what you want your career as a physician to look like to best suit your unique interests and skills.

The Hippocratic Forum (HF) is a group of doctors and medical trainees committed to rediscovering ideals in medicine and working at their best. It was started by a group of trainees from institutions around the country interested in exploring ways of cultivating a deeper sense of meaning and flourishing in the medical profession (i.e., how to be both happy AND a doctor). The approach combines insights from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), neuroscience, and classical philosophy/virtue theory. In summer 2022 we started a chapter of HF here at WashU, which hosts seminars and monthly lunch discussions on topics related to ideals in medicine, including wisdom, cognitive reframing, mindfulness/interior recollection, work-life harmony, justice, courage, and more.