A Crowning Achievement for Medical Students: MSTARs at AGS Conference
The John A. Hartford Foundation supports a number of programs designed to increase the number of physicians who choose academic geriatrics as their career, and others that promote aging-related medical research. One of the Foundation’s most successful initiatives, however, does both: the Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) program. Nine percent of the earliest program participants have gone on to become medical school faculty with expertise in aging, compared to the one percent of students nationwide who go into geriatrics fellowships.
MSTAR, administrated by the American Federations for Aging Research (AFAR), gives medical students a taste of aging-related research under the mentorship of top experts in the field at some of the nation’s most prestigious medical schools. At the end of each year’s session, MSTAR scholars crown their training achievements by presenting posters of their research projects and participating in a networking event with prominent scholars of aging at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Geriatrics Society (AGS). The poster session and networking event are sponsored in part by the AGS Foundation for Health in Aging.
Seventy-two of the 2010 MSTAR cohort presented at this year’s AGS conference, held in Orlando, Florida, and by all accounts, their posters proved a resounding success. They covered a broad range of topics, from Alzheimer’s-related changes in the brain to the relationship between depression and disability. You can read more about their presentations on the Foundation’s blog, Health AGEnda.
MSTAR is a continuation of the original Hartford/AFAR Medical Student Geriatric Scholars Program, established in 1994. Today, the Foundation partners with two other major sponsors, the MetLife Foundation and the National Institute on Aging (NIA), in supporting the program. Over the past 16 years, the program has provided training in basic science, clinical, and health services research to 1,354 students from more than 120 medical schools. Any student in good standing who has completed at least one year of study at an accredited medical or osteopathic school in the U.S. can participate in the program.
MSTAR provides an 8 to 12 week experience that usually takes place over the course of a summer at an NIA-funded National Training Center or Partner Site, or at a student’s home institution, if it is a participating school. You can find a complete list of training centers and participating schools on the MSTAR page of the AFAR Web site. During the course of the program, students receive a monthly stipend, and at the end, a stipend to travel to the AGS conference. Three months after completing their training, scholars must also submit a journal-style paper that details the course of their experience. One-third of the most recent MSTAR cohort published their papers in peer-reviewed academic journals.
Competition for places in the program is stiff. Every applicant needs a sponsor from his or her home institution and needs to have demonstrated academic excellence, interest in geriatrics, and a potential for future achievement and leadership.
The students themselves report that MSTAR has a significant impact on their career choices. In a 2009 survey of MSTAR participants, 84 percent reported the program had “some” to “a great deal” of influence on their subsequent choice of field. Among participants from the 1994-97 cohorts, 20 percent chose to become geriatricians or ging-related specialists. Clearly, MSTAR is one of the most effective tools we have to encourage medical students to consider focusing their careers on aging and age-related diseases.
