Student-to-Student: A Novel Approach to Community Outreach.

ABSTRACT

Community outreach is an established method for organizations to interact with the community. It is often done to help improve the community and its members by providing resources and educational opportunities. A growing crisis facing the United States of America is a worsening physician shortage, which will negatively impact many across the nation, especially vulnerable communities. The Student-to-Student organization offers a novel approach to community outreach by helping introduce and inspire high school students and young adults to pursue medicine. The organization is run by medical students and supervised by the College of Medicine faculty. It offers students from local high schools, community colleges, and undergraduate universities the opportunity to visit the medical college, where they can explore human anatomy and discuss the different facets of medicine and medical education with current medical students. This experience provides medical students with the ability to refine their public speaking abilities, gain leadership experience, improve their professional identity, and be involved in meaningful community outreach. These attributes also serve to enhance medical student residency applications at a time when uncertainties abound in the aftermath of Step One becoming pass/fail. The organization has run continuously since 1987 (except for one year during the COVID-19 pandemic). It has evolved over the years to become a high-performing organization that provides more than 80 tours yearly to thousands of students from the surrounding communities. This article aims to provide a detailed description of the history, organization, and impact of the Student-to-Student organization so that other medical students have a framework for implementing a similar program at their institution.