The Johns Hopkins Geriatric Summer Scholars Program: A model to increase diversity in geriatric medicine

The Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins University strives to create a workforce that represents the racial, ethnic, and sex diversity of U.S. society. To that end, the division has developed a summer program for underrepresented minority first-year medical students to expose them to geriatric medicine and research. The ultimate aim of this initiative is to recruit students to academic medicine, specifically geriatric medicine, where they are drastically underrepresented. Nineteen students participated in the program from the summer of 2002 to the summer of 2004. The participants have continued on to win seven other research fellowships, participate in the National Institute on Aging Technical Assistance Workshop, and present at four national conferences, including the American Geriatrics Society conference and the Gerontological Society of America meeting. One of the students, who is completing medical school in May 2005, is returning to begin the internal medicine residency program at Johns Hopkins Bayview, where the majority of the geriatric faculty practice medicine. Another student who is also graduating is obtaining her Masters in Public Health with a concentration in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health before starting residency. This article describes the outcomes of the first 3 years of the program, with an emphasis on curriculum development and the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minority medical students.