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Minority Medical Students Invited to Apply for New APA Fellowship

This summer APA will introduce a group of minority medical students to the rewards and challenges faced by psychiatrists in their everyday practices through its minority medical student summer fellowship.

The fellowship, which is funded by the federal Center for Mental Health Services, will provide the students with the opportunity to work closely with psychiatrist mentors in a variety of practice settings. APA is encouraging directors of medical student education to spread the word about the summer fellowship to medical students.

To qualify for the fellowship, medical students must be one of the following: American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Asian American, African American, or Hispanic. The students must also be enrolled in a U.S. medical school.

Deborah Hales, M.D., director of APA’s Department of Education and Career Development, said that the fellowship addresses issues raised in U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher’s report titled, "Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity."

The report, released in August 2001, states that mental health is fundamental to overall health and productivity but that the "mental health field is plagued by disparities in the availability of and access to its services," and that "these disparities are viewed readily through the lenses of racial and cultural diversity."

Hales said that "one way to reduce these disparities is to increase the number of psychiatrists from different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. To this end, we have created the medical student summer fellowship."

Hales said that the primary goal of the fellowship is to encourage ethnic minority medical students to consider a career in psychiatry by giving them an opportunity to participate in "some of the most challenging and interesting areas of psychiatry."

The program will match approximately 10 first- through fourth-year medical students with a mentor on the basis of the medical student’s professional interests, desired practice setting, and geographic location. The fellowship provides each student with up to $4,000 for travel expenses, meals, and lodging for an entire month while working with his or her psychiatrist mentor.

APA encourages students to work with minority and underserved populations in urban or rural areas, but students may opt to work in other clinical and research settings.

Mentors participating in the fellowship program belong to the APA/CMHS Minority Fellowship, APA’s National Minority Mentors Network, and APA’s Women’s Mentoring Network (Psychiatric News, January 4).

Application forms can be downloaded at www.psych.org/students/summer_fellow.cfm. More information is available by calling Linda Roll at (202) 682-6094 or Nancy Delanoche at (202) 682-6126.

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