“一个更好的研究者”

Six OUWB medical students spent the summer in a research program sponsored by the National Institutes of Health through the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

The Medical 学生 研究 Program in Diabetes allows medical students to conduct research under the direction of established scientists in the areas of diabetes, 激素的作用, 生理学, 胰岛细胞生物学, 和/或肥胖.

研究 is conducted at one of 16 National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease (NIDDK)-designated diabetes research centers in the U.S., 隶属于斯坦福大学等机构, 华盛顿大学, 和范德比尔特大学医学中心.

The program aims to help students gain an improved understanding of career opportunities in biomedical research and a comprehensive understanding of diabetes, 临床表现, 还有未解决的问题. 研究项目是在纳什维尔举行的项目结束会议上提出的.

2022年来自OUWB的参与者是M2s Emily Babcock (Vanderbilt), 范妮·黄(斯坦福大学), Nikki Nguyen(华盛顿), 尼基塔·帕特尔(科罗拉多大学), 奥布里安娜·佩雷斯(范德比尔特大学), 马修·普雷沃斯特(芝加哥大学).

“The opportunity to participate in this program has offered me valuable insights into clinic work and translational research of a physician,黄说。.

其他人也有类似的想法.

“This experience helped solidify my interest in pursuing a career in academic medicine,” said 佩雷斯. “It was invaluable being able to learn from some of the most brilliant physician-scientists in their field.”

“My first — and bigger — takeaway was that I got to see how interdisciplinary a common health condition like diabetes is,阮说。. “My second big takeaway from the experience was learning how to troubleshoot and be open-minded.”

“一个更好的研究者”

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 37.300万美国人——大约十分之一——患有糖尿病. 据估计，9600万美国成年人——超过三分之一——患有前驱糖尿病, or a health condition that increases a person’s risk of Type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases. 没有重大干预措施, the CDC predicts that as many as one in three adults in the United States could have diabetes by 2050.

OUWB students who dedicated their summer to the Medical 学生 研究 Program in Diabetes said they took a lot away from the experience.

佩雷斯, 例如, 说她在关岛长大, and noted that many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders “experience a disproportionately high burden of chronic diseases, 比如糖尿病和终末期肾病.”

“Naturally, my research interests gravitated towards these areas of medicine,”她说。.

佩雷斯 spent the summer at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s diabetes research center. 她参与了许多研究活动, 从文献综述的健康素养在慢性肾脏疾病, 安排研究访问并进行原始数据收集, 清理数据并进行统计分析.

在研究生院, I was involved in a number of projects focused on addressing social determinants of health in patients with kidney disease, 我觉得我想继续扩大我在这个领域的研究经验,”她说。. “I specifically applied to the program at Vanderbilt because of their nephrology concentration.

Prevost said he was looking for an opportunity that allowed him to “get a different experience, 在一个不同的地方和环境, 在另一所大学，不仅仅是代表我的学校, 而是去体验一些新的东西.”

他在芝加哥大学度过了一个夏天, where he led a project called “Three-Dimensional Analysis of Pancreatic Islet Capillary Density: Interspecies Comparison.”

“I learned a lot about diabetes and I think that was the thing…teaching yourself about the topic, 学习如何与他人一起研究, 以及如何有效地呈现和显示这些信息,他说.

阮说，她还想了解更多关于研究的知识, 特别是在胃肠病学领域, 内分泌学, 和肾脏学. She spent the summer at the UW Diabetes 研究 Center at South Lake Union in Seattle.

She worked with a doctor who studies complications of diabetes and in particular the mechanisms around atherosclerosis and the role of the apolipoproteins.

“I feel that the NIDDK experience made me both a better researcher and clinician,”她说。. “It gave me more appreciation for those who start the research in basic sciences/at the ground up, 这让我想起了我们所做的一些研究的总体局限性, and reminded me the importance of understanding the patho生理学 in determining diagnosis and management.”

黄在斯坦福大学的项目中度过了她的时间. Her project was a longitudinal study on clinical and ophthalmic imaging biomarkers that may predict worsening vision in patients with diabetic retinopathy that Huang designed with the help of her research mentor.

Huang was able to complete an entire project (including data collection and data analysis on over 300 patients over 5 years of clinical care) and curate a poster for the end-of-program research conference.

She said she sought a way to maximize the summer break between M1 and M2 and was pleased to find the NIDDK program because it “aligned well with my personal interests in nutrition and 内分泌学-related translational research and allowed me to conduct research at well-renowned diabetes centers across the nation.”

“My primary takeaways from this experience are that it takes a lot of time and teamwork (especially from biostatisticians) to complete a research project, 但如果有一个有才华的团队，这是可能的, and research inspires curiosity as there are infinite unanswered questions out there that researchers can explore,”她说。.

黄鼓励其他医科学生考虑这个项目.

“我强烈建议m15申请这个项目, 即使你对糖尿病不感兴趣, 内分泌学, 胃肠病学, 作为一名医生从事与营养相关的工作,”她说。. “这些都是跨学科领域，可以与任何专业相匹配, such as my experience with researching diabetes and how that relates to ophthalmic care, and this was a structured program designed to integrate innovative research projects into eight weeks for medical students.”