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Student Showcase

MAPS Osteopathic Education Series:
Kelly Scruggs, MPH., OMS III

Through a YouTube series titled “MAPS Osteopathic Education Series,” Kelly Scruggs, M.P.H., OMS III, hopes to expand education around osteopathic medicine and bridge the knowledge gap between D.O. and M.D. programs to dispel myths about osteopathic medical education.

To watch the MAPS Osteopathic Education YouTube series, viewers must first take a short pre-assessment survey before getting access to the YouTube playlist. 

Read the Q&A Interview with Kelly Scruggs, M.P.H., OMS III

Q: Where did the idea for the MAPS Osteopathic Education Series come from?
A: It came from a desire to increase minority involvement in medicine. And I feel osteopathic medicine in particular … We don’t have enough African Americans applying to medical school. And that is because we don’t have a lot of African Americans in pre-med programs. And that stems from the lack of support and access to be able to get to these [pre-med] programs and have the right influence … I think it stems from less knowledge about the profession … I know there’s a lot of myths that are out there regarding the profession. Maybe there’s a lack of understanding of what [D.O. students] are and all the [skills] we possess, and maybe people think that we’re not as qualified or as licensed as M.D. doctors. So we want to dispel that myth.

Q: Can you tell me about some of the content you plan to cover in the video series?
A: For this first episode, we’re covering [joint motions] and then the planes of motion. We’re covering osteopathic tenets and philosophy … We’ll talk about our founder, Andrew Still, and just a little background and history of osteopathic medicine. Then we also cover different myths and misperceptions of osteopathic medicine. The second, third and fourth episodes have a myriad of different demonstrations and testimonies from students. They’ll be demonstrating different [osteopathic manipulative medicine] techniques on either mannequins or volunteer students … they’re going to demonstrate techniques like muscle energy, they’re going to do suboccipital release, and they’re going to do different soft tissue techniques. One student is going to do a high-velocity, low-amplitude treatment … The rest of this series is pretty much going to be all the key demonstrations and testimonies of how [OMS II through OMS IV students] have been in the clinic and seen [osteopathic manipulative treatment] done or had OMT done on themselves or performed OMT on actual patients in the clinic, and [we’ll] talk about that testimony and the effect that it had.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A: Medical students have … put in a lot of work to create the series and give [students] a good impression of what we stand for. They’re all real stories and all from the heart. So I just want people to learn from it … I just hope that it serves as a source of knowledge and a source of education and is an interest builder, because the main goal is to increase minority involvement and minority applications to osteopathic [medical] schools. So hopefully this sparks a fire and gets people interested, and it encourages people to apply to medical school.

Understanding Barriers to Care for Minorities in Athens County 

Kasey Roush, OMSII and Sharon Casapulla, EdD, MPH

Kasey Roush worked with the Athens County Racial Equity Coalition over the course of one year.  She summarizes the work of the Health and Wellness Subcommittee implementing a Community Based Participatory Research model. 

Poster presented at the National Rural Health Association annual conference. Albuquerque NM


View the research poster


"As Long as I Got a Breath in My Body”: Risk and Resistance in Black Maternal Embodiment

Joselyn Hines, OMSIII; Sarah Rubin, Ph.D

“Mothering while Black” in Cleveland, Ohio is a radical act. This highly segregated, highly unequal urban environment is replete with the chronic stressors that degrade well-being and diminish survival for Black mothers and their infants; specifically, a maternal mortality rate two and a half times that of their white counterparts and an infant mortality rate nearly three times that of infants born to white mothers. In the midst of such tragedy and disadvantage, Black mothers strive to love and care for their children in ways that mitigate the toxicity of structural racism. The seventeen pregnant and postpartum Black women in this ethnographic study describe transformational experiences with what we label “betterment:” whereby they center their children’s perspective and needs, reconsider their social networks, and focus on the future with an unflinching understanding of the constraints of structural racism.

This article was published in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry

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Addressing Weight Bias in Health Care: The Power of Stories and Empathy

Sami Nandyal, OMS-IV; Alanna Meadows, OMS-IV; Alicia Rodgers, OMS-IV; Gisselle Pichardo, OMS-II; and Sharon Casapulla, EdD, MPH

Weight bias in health care is an often overlooked topic in medical education that can lead to adverse health outcomes for large-bodied patients. Health professionals have been found to be less willing to /treat, spend less time with, and inappropriately— and sometimes neglectfully—fixate on patient weight as the cause of their health complaints. We developed and tested an educational intervention with healthcare trainees and professionals aimed at reducing weight bias. 

This article was published in the Ohio Family Physician

Read their research


Toward Resilience: Medical students' Perception of Social Support

Sharon Casapulla, Ed.D, MPH; Jason Rodriguez, OMSII; Samantha Nandyal, OMSII; and Bhakti Chavan, Ph.D

There is strong evidence that social support—particularly perceived social support—functions as a protective factor for health. Few studies have investigated how medical students perceive the types of social support they experience. This study aimed to determine how osteopathic medical students perceive social support, understand the factors that influence their perceptions, and explore how group participation in a cocurricular, academic program could affect student perceptions.

This article was published in the Journal of the Osteopathic Medicine.  

Read Their Research


Continuity in Primary Care - A Mini Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship Elective

Monet McCalla, OMSIII and Jacob Taber, OMSIV

The Continuity in Primary Care elective at the Heritage College is a mini-LIC that seeks to combine block clerkships and the longitudinal clerkship to take advantage of both forms of learning --- intense immersion in a single subject as well as long-term practice continuity. Monet and Jacob analyzed data from the students in the mini-LIC at the Heritage College to explore breadth and depth of the student experience.

View their research poster
 

Student and Preceptor Experiences in a Mini Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship: A Participatory Self-Study

Ryan Paulus, OMSIII; Dorvan Byler, OMSIII; and Sharon Casapulla, Ed.D, MPH

Students participating in longitudinal integrated clerkships (LIC) experience longitudinal, comprehensive care of patients, report improved satisfaction with their training, and express increased interest in pursuing a career in primary care. As participants in the LIC, we sought to measure our own experiences, gathering data in a systematic way to share our perceptions. We developed and analyzed  an online survey that included scale and open-ended questions

This article of the mini LIC at the Heritage College was published in  PRiMER.

Research Study