For 50 years, the Poussaint Prematriculation Summer Program (PPSP) at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has given incoming Harvard Medical School students from underrepresented groups an opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of science and medicine before starting classes. The format of this year’s program may have changed—becoming all-virtual because of the coronavirus crisis—but the spirit of learning and professional apprenticeship was fully intact.

Applying to medical school is an undeniably complicated process, but Azan Virji discovered that it’s even tougher when you’re an international student.

Despite coronavirus challenges, 3 HMS summer programs innovate, inspire:

“Way back in March, we knew things were going to be very different. It was clear COVID was going to impact everything in some way,” said Christopher De La Cerda, recruitment and student life manager in the Harvard Medical School Office of Recruitment and Multicultural Affairs (ORMA) and coordinator of the Poussaint Prematriculation Summer Program (PPSP).

“Your journey here begins in extraordinary times,” said Dean George Q. Daley, acknowledging the uncertainty, and even anxiety, that this year’s incoming Harvard medical and dental students may be feeling as they begin their studies remotely this month, in the midst of a global pandemic.

Daley’s remarks came during the dean’s welcoming address to members of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine Class of 2024 on Aug. 3. Gathering via teleconference, they were joined by fellow classmates located all around the...

Read more about Like No Other

Moving through the world as a black woman, I am accustomed to not being represented as “the norm.” Everything from the hue of the Band-Aids that cover my wounds to the heroes in the movies I watch makes me acutely aware of my deviation from what is typical and expected: I am black and female, whereas the world represented around me is often white and male. For me and for many members of minority groups in the United States, this realization does not come as an epiphany but is instead an essential fact that we must come to understand to navigate the world in which we live. It was not until I... Read more about Medical Education Is Missing the Bull’s-eye

Last week we found ourselves sharing yet again — first with anger, then with despair — the story and horrific images of another black life being stolen by police brutality.

We tried to focus on our routine activities, like preparing coffee to help us get through another day in the hospital. Our hearts were heavy, our minds racing.

“How are you today?”

“How was your weekend?”

“How’s it going?”

As a Black woman and medical student in the often lonely world of ...

Read more about This Is What I Want To Tell My White Professors When They Ask, ‘How Are You Today?'

Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Tony McDade.

For some, their killings illuminate racism’s stronghold on our society for the first time. However, police brutality is part of the epidemic of anti-Black racism initiated when the first slave ships docked on American shores in ...

Read more about Racism In Medicine Isn't An Abstract Notion. It's Happening All Around Us, Every Day.

Close to becoming a doctor, DACA recipient’s career threatened.

Graduating Harvard Medical School student Blanca Morales Temich came to the U.S. nearly 30 years ago with her parents, who are undocumented immigrants.

 

Chase Marso remembers the moment he realized ...

Read more about Medicine in Motion

Graduating HMS students hold marriage ceremony in midst of COVID-19 pandemic.

It was an April wedding unlike anything they had ever imagined. 

Given the dangerous pandemic threatening the world right now, Parisa Fallah and Gavin Ovsak wouldn’t have had it any other way.