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Disclaimer
Notice: The following
information was provided by MD/PhD students,
and is not official data from the MD/PhD
program administration or from APSA. For
official information, please contact the
program administration listed below. If you
are aware of any outdated or incorrect
information on this page, or if you can
think of anything useful to include, please
let us know at
ssh@physicianscientists.org so that we
may improve the page.
University of
Washington
There is no formal social
science/medical humanities track in the
University of Washington's MD/PhD program.
However, interested MSTP students have been
known to conduct research rotations and join
doctorate programs in Medical Geography and
Medical History and Ethics. These students
set up social science/medical humanities
dissertations on a case-by-case basis with
program directors, advisors and department
chairs.
If you are interested in
applying to UW MSTP for the social sciences
and humanities, we recommend some variation
of the following process:
-
Spend some time exploring
the websites for graduate programs at UW
and brainstorm the kind of research you
would want to do; think about how it
would be relevant and attractive to both
MSTP and to the graduate department of
interest;
-
Contact both the MSTP
office and the graduate department of
interest to let them know of your plan
to co-apply and to elicit their help in
putting together your application.
To help understand the
application process at UW, we have included
a case-study description of UW’s current
MSTP student in medical geography, Sunil
Aggarwal. Note that Sunil did not apply to
the MSTP program initially as a medical
geography candidate, but chose this field
after enrolling. However, the UW MSTP
program is open to SSH applications, and
Sunil’s case should help in putting together
an application. The following websites may
also be helpful:
Links:
http://www.mstp.washington.edu/
http://depts.washington.edu/mhedept/
http://depts.washington.edu/geog/
Sunil Aggarwal Case Scenario:
Sunil Aggarwal entered the UW MSTP in summer
of 2002. He began to be interested in
pursuing an epistemologically
non-traditional MD/PhD route when seeking
out potential advisors for his first summer
rotation, a rotation with which the program
encouraged students to be experimental.
Prior to a second-look revisit, Sunil
indicated the names of several potential
rotation advisors to the MSTP by email, and
they forwarded his application file to the
potentials in advance of his meetings. One
that he listed was a Professor in the
Geography Department, a medical geographer
who held adjunct appointments in School of
Medicine departments and in International
Health. He had a good meeting with the
potential advisor in the Geography
Department, and then met with one of the
MSTP directors who okayed the medical
geography rotation under the Professor in
the Geography Department. (The director did
not okay a rotation with a ND Cancer
Research Fellow who was studying alternative
botanical medicine at the UW-affiliated
FHCRC, but that's another story; it is only
mentioned here to underscore the point that
it was not an ‘anything goes’ situation...).
Sunil enjoyed his summer rotation in medical
geography. For his second summer rotation
following his first year of medical school,
with the encouragement of his potential
geography advisor, Sunil worked in a Genome
Sciences laboratory on a project that
related to genes, infectious disease,
anti-malarial drugs, and geography, seeking
to broaden his scientific research
experience. During his second year of
medical school, Sunil took a graduate
seminar in the Geography department and also
formally applied to the department seeking
post-masters status. He met with another
MSTP director who was supportive of his
intention to pursue PhD work in Geography.
The UW MSTP director contacted the head of
MSTP programs at NIH to confirm if it would
be okay if a UW MSTP student were to pursue
his PhD in medical geography, to which was
replied an enthusiastic 'yes'. Another
meeting was set up with the MSTP director
and the potential Geography advisor that
took place in the Geography department at
which potential research topics were
discussed, and the proviso was made by the
MSTP director that Sunil conduct medical
geographic research that would involve
empirical data collection. In later meetings
he did not attend between the MSTP director,
the Geography advisor, and the Chair of the
Geography Department, they worked out a
skeleton back-up funding arrangement with
the Graduate School for Sunil’s PhD years in
the event that he was not to obtain outside
funding for his graduate studies. For the
first year of graduate studies, as was
customary, Sunil would be funded by the MSTP.
Prior to beginning coursework in the
Geography department in Fall 2004, Sunil
completed his USMLE Step 1, did one 3rd year
clinical clerkship in Family Medicine, and
took the GRE at the advice of his advisor so
that he would be able to apply for graduate
funding sources that required it, which
later panned out. Currently in 2008, Sunil
is a doctoral candidate in geography
conducting dissertation field research on
the medical geography of cannabinoid
botanicals and on the political ecology of
biotic substance users’ mental distress when
facing possession charges; his studies with
the chronically and critically ill in
Washington state seek to bridge a
translational gap in the field of
cannabinoid medicine. He knows of one other
MSTP student who has completed a half-summer
research rotation in medical geography and
another who has taken a graduate course in
the geography department.
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