Research is a crucial tool for the advancement of medical practice and patient care. Moreover, research pertaining to women’s health is significantly lacking in a systemic, far-reaching, and historically important fashion. It is imperative that medical students, especially those poised to become women’s health physicians, are equipped to develop and spearhead meaningful research. The WHRC is a novel method to streamline research opportunities and education for medical schools that do not have a pre-existing curriculum in place or want to expand their efforts on women’s health-related research. Student participants in the WHRC were more likely to identify key mentors and initiate women-centered research projects. In the two years after its inception, over 50 student-led projects on women’s health were initiated with multiple students successfully completing poster and oral presentations and publishing manuscripts.
Very few studies have developed and evaluated the impact of standardized non-degree medical research programs for medical students. As in our study, these other studies reveal the strength of standardized research organizations focused on incorporating medical students into research practices (Schexnayder, 2018; Fernandez, 2019). Uniquely, the WHRC focuses on empowering medical students to lead and take ownership of their projects from the start while providing the education, resources, and support for success. The group also has a specialized focus on women’s health research. With this method, students are not only provided access to research studies, but are also equipped with the skillset to create high-quality research throughout their career.
From a career advancement standpoint, the WHRC has helped medical students to become more involved in research projects and to improve their resume for residency applications. As noted previously, the average number of research experiences and projects amongst successfully matched residents is increasing each year, and medical students must participate in some form of research in order to be well-rounded residency applicants. The WHRC provides a structured mechanism through which medical schools can better support and encourage research from the early years of medical school. The mentorship model gives students increasing responsibility and autonomy as they progress, and the extensive resources and faculty support ensure students will be able to see projects through to completion.
From a medical education standpoint, a structured research program provides a venue to teach specialized research skills to students. To successfully perform clinical research in practice, physicians must have the ability to develop a research question, design a project, and complete all of the logistical steps to successfully carry out that project. To participate in research on a larger scale and to make an impact in larger communities, physicians must be able to analyze and interpret data and eloquently explain these findings to others. Finally, to understand and learn from others, a physician must be able to critically evaluate findings and assess strengths and weaknesses. Currently, there is no standardized mechanism to teach these vital skills in medical school. Data above shows that the WHRC gives students the tools and confidence to design and execute high-quality research. This model was of mutual benefit to the faculty and students in an academic setting. Faculty are experts in their field and have many high-quality clinical questions, but often have little time to investigate these due to clinical and other responsibilities. Medical students, on the other hand, are novices in their fields of interest, but do have the enthusiasm and time to perform research.
From a departmental standpoint, the WHRC provided a robust support system to produce research in an academic setting. While all departments within a School of Medicine are required to produce research, not many have standardized formats with collaboration amongst medical students, residents, and faculty. Uniting these groups allows each to leverage their strengths and produce a higher volume of projects. Additionally, the WHRC was completely medical-student driven, which allowed ownership and autonomy over their research experiences. The residents and faculty were available for support, but the medical student was responsible for driving progress on their own projects. This alleviated the burden of many of the administrative tasks related to research that previously would have fallen to faculty and residents.
From a community health standpoint, the WHRC makes a special impact on a historically underfunded and understudied population - women. The development of the WHRC at just one medical school has significantly increased the research productivity on important topics within women’s health across a variety of medical specialties. The implementation of the WHRC at other institutions would amplify this result tremendously and make a real impact on the large gender research gap that currently exists in medicine.
As the data above shows, participation in WHRC did not eliminate all research barriers. The main barrier shifted from starting a project to finishing one. This may be attributed to unanticipated barriers after project design (i.e. difficulty obtaining data, IRB-related delays, and varying availability of faculty and students to meet and discuss problems, etc.). Notably, since obtaining this data, WHRC leadership has worked extensively with the institution’s IRB office and local hospital systems to streamline these processes. This study was developed with the intention to identify shortcomings of the WHRC, such as those listed. The survey results were used to progressively improve the experience of student participants and to identify and address barriers as they were encountered.
Of note, the continued evolution of the group was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many organizations, WHRC was forced to switch solely to virtual platforms for all meetings. Because of this it was very difficult to maintain faculty-student and senior-junior peer mentor relationships, which we perceived as one of the strongest benefits of the Consortium. Without in-person support and Consortium meetings, participation declined, as was seen in other student groups. Attempts to transition to Zoom-based meetings contributed to Zoom fatigue for the remaining participating students (Elbogen, 2022). Additionally, clinical research at most institutions was paused for an extended period. For WHRC participants, this contributed to pre-existing IRB and data collection barriers. There were limitations to data collection and analysis related to this survey-based study. While the dataset captures most WHRC participants, the response rate was lower than anticipated; thus, the data does not give a full view of the attitudes and experiences of every student participant of the Consortium.
Future goals for the WHRC include larger-scale work to increase the reach and impact of the group and bring attention to the need for more research in the field of women’s health. This includes formation of additional chapters at nearby medical schools, with a yearly conference to share the impact of the work with others who have a passion and dedication for women’s health research. We would also like to further push the needle and formalize a process for ensuring medical students feel supported and have the resources and mentorship they need to take projects all the way through from inception to publication. This will likely require some reworking of our mentorship models to allow for continuity and protected time and resources to ensure project completion.
Overall, the WHRC has filled many needs since its inception, including on personal, professional, organizational, and community levels. We have demonstrated that it is possible to form a student-led research group with a mission to educate students, form student-faculty mentor relationships, improve student research skills, support more well-rounded residency applicants, and most importantly, generate high-quality research in women’s health. We emphasize that with an enthusiastic leadership team, the formation of a Women’s Health Research Consortium is an attainable goal with far-reaching impact, and we hope that our methods above will encourage others to form similar groups in the future.