Research Letter
Medical Education
February 5, 2021
Association of Summer College Academic Enrichment Program Participation With Medical Student Diversity and Intent to Practice in Underserved Areas
JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(2):e2034773. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.34773
US medical schools seek to enroll diverse student populations to address national physician workforce needs. As a strategy to increase diversity, many organizations and institutions sponsor premedical summer college academic enrichment programs (SCAEPs) that may address Liaison Committee for Medical Education Standard 3.3, Diversity/Pipeline Programs and Partnerships.1 We examined national medical school matriculant cohorts to assess whether participation in an SCAEP is associated with increased student diversity and graduation of students with sustained intentions to practice in underserved areas.
This cohort study included US medical school matriculants from 2013 to 2015 who graduated through 2019 and voluntarily completed the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Matriculating Student Questionnaire2 and Graduation Questionnaire.3 The AAMC Human Subjects Office exempted the study from institutional board review because it did not constitute human participant research and used deidentified data. This study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) reporting guideline.