By Ntuv Tunka
Minnesota ’s Future Doctors Program, created by the University of Minnesota Medical School in partnership with the Mayo Medical School on June 28 th, announced their selected candidates for the program. Among the 23 candidates recruited for the program are eleven African American students in which eight of them are African born immigrants.
Director of the MFD program, Jo Peterson in a statement to the press notes this of the candidates
"These fantastic young people are the whole package, the type of students we want and need in our medical schools if we are to prepare the next generation of physicians who can relate to the increasingly diverse population in our state".
The students, who were recruited after completing their first year of college or university and demonstrated an interest and zeal to incorporate and practice medicine serving Minnesota’s multi-cultured and diverse communities, are the first cohort of the program. They will be required to explore the lives of doctors in a six-week summer experience and perusal of the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, the Mayo Clinic, and the Duluth Hospital facilities, where they would also be schooled on clinical care and research.
The MFD program is the conception of two former University of Minnesota Medical School students, Fitzpatrick Mathew and Gareth Forde, who advocated and proposed the recruitment of talented and brilliant minority and immigrant and disadvantaged students for careers within the Minnesota Medical Community so as to better represent the growing diversity in the state.
After this first summer, the students will spend two more summers in which they will be grilled and prepared both intellectually, and physically to apply and succeed in Medical School. By the end of the program, it is expected that the cohort students will be exceptional medical applicants and would want to stay here in Minnesota to practice medicine.
It is also expected that these students will fill the void that has been created by the absence of practitioners that share not only the language, religion, and culture of patient consumers in our diversified community, but also, will relate to the backgrounds and experiences of these consumers.
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