Dartmouth Medical School student Radall Zuckerman thinks he knows one way to help solve the nation's shortage of primary care physicians.
Thanks to a grant from a national foundation, he is getting the chance to prove that he is right.
He and another student set out this summer to develop national public service programs they designed themselves.
Third year medical students Zuckerman and Daniel Filene were each awarded a $50,000 Public Service Fellowship this spring by the Echoing Green Foundation.
They will take two years off from medical school. Zuckerman will develop a new health care internship program for the federal government and Filene has already begun a youth program meant to build cooperation across the boundaries of race and class.
The New York-based Echoing Green Foundation supports public service with the 20 grants it awards each year to graduate students all across the nation.
Students are to use the funding to develop their proposals into long-lasting programs, but each student must find permanent funding to see that goal realized.
"They invest in individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit of community service," Zuckerman said.
Zuckerman's grant was awarded for a project that will encourage pre-medical students to consider entering primary health care in the fields of family practice, general internal medicine and general pediatrics.
But his research on the proposal then led him to Washington D.C., where the Department of Health and Human Services wants Zuckerman to develop his project for President Bill Clinton's National Service Program, which will provide loans for college students in exchange for public service.
"Now that the legislation has passed the House and the Senate," Zuckerman said, "it is up to organizations, communities and federal agencies to design programs to compete for National Service funding."
After Zuckerman won his grant, he searched for full funding among the foundations and corporations of Washington.
Zuckerman met with the Director of the Bureau of Health Professions, who invited him to target his Echoing Green grant towards Clinton's program and to help the Health and Human Services department gain funding from that program.
"Clearly our nation is in need of more primary care doctors," Zuckerman said. "It's my belief that the time to start students thinking about primary care is not medical school, but before they get there."
Zuckerman said he hopes his program will offer stipends to students in primary care internships, which are more difficult to find than internships in specialty medicine.
Filene is currently in Colorado leading his own project, a bicycle and camping tour for high school students of different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.
Filene founded Spokes of America to promote environmental understanding between youths from different cultures.
His pilot program is a four-week, 750-mile trip through the prairies, forests, mountains and deserts of Colorado and Utah.
Students from the greater Boston area are completing assigned readings, participating in service projects and meeting with local environmental organizations.
Filene's program required applicants to develop ideas for service projects that they can pursue in their home communities.
"Individuals of different social and cultural backgrounds can come to understand, appreciate and work with one another on society's problems," he said.
Filene plans on seeking outside financial support to make his organization self-sustained, according to Zuckerman.
