Summer Research Training in Aging for Medical Students

描述（由申请人提供）：皮特/UTMB暑期项目的目的是让来自不同背景的医学生参与衰老研究的个人有益经验，并通过与成功的榜样和热情的同龄人建立密切的关系来促进衰老研究的职业发展。匹兹堡大学和UTMB为国家培训项目提供了丰富的环境，有许多对NIA感兴趣的活跃和完善的研究项目，从基础到临床和卫生服务研究。虽然皮特已经为自己的医学院学生成功开展了衰老研究的暑期项目，但拟议中的项目将允许其他学校的学生参与。该方案与邻近的两所医学院（西弗吉尼亚大学和辛辛那提大学）建立了一个新的招聘和支持网络。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of the Pitt/UTMB Summer Program is to engage medical students from diverse backgrounds in personally rewarding experiences in aging research and to promote careers in aging research through close relationships with successful role models and enthusiastic peers. The University of Pittsburgh and UTMB are rich environments for a national training program, with numerous active and well established research programs of interest to NIA ranging from basic to clinical and health services research. While Pitt has successful summer programs in aging research for its own medical students, the proposed program will allow students from other schools to participate. This proposal creates a novel recruitment and support network with two neighboring medical schools (University of West Virginia and University of Cincinnati). The summer program is an 8-12 week intensive experience that includes an individualized research experience under a sponsoring mentor, a structured didactic experience that is directly linked to student research projects, opportunities to interact with potential role models and peers and efforts to build a sense of identity and membership for participants. The Program includes both real-time and follow-up evaluation processes designed to continuously improve the program and to assess its effectiveness in achieving its long term goals. The long term goal of the program is to increase the number of established physician investigators who pursue research in high priority areas related to aging.