Our History
The MedAchieve Scholars Program begin in the mind of a Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine (TouroCOM) Student from Harlem who wanted to see an increase in doctors coming out of his hometown. This student, Nami, had the idea to partner with an existing youth program, the East Harlem Tutorial Program, which has existed to prepare Harlem students for college since 1958. In 2009 this dream became a reality as Nami, with the help of TouroCOM, created the Pre-Pre-Med Program (PPMP) – a one year elective course offered by the East Harlem Tutorial Program. This elective course would be run out of the TouroCOM campus and would be run by Student Doctors who would serve to administrate this new program, create new curriculum and training courses, and to act as mentors to high school students in the program. The PPMP served to introduce students to Medical Sciences, Osteopathic Medicine, Foundations in Medical/Scientific Research, and laboratory science.
During the fall of 2012, PPMP Student Directors Caitlin Norcross and Christianna Stuart along with PPMP Faculty Advisor Dr. Stephen Jones brought forth the idea of utilizing a Learning Model System (LMS) similar to the one employed at TouroCOM to teach the medical school curriculum to student physicians. By introducing proven curriculum delivery methods by means of the iclicker system and Examsoft software to track student outcomes for the PPMP, it became apparent that with proper planning, coordination, and execution, the PPMP will be able to recruit more High School students and extend the “pipeline” system by helping to prepare High School students for entrance into science based college programs and an eventual career in Medicine. It was discussions regarding implementation of the new LMS and recruitment that the MedAchieve Scholars program was born.
The year-long PPMP was rebranded as “MedStart” and a supplementary second-year program titled “MedExcel” (launching in Fall 2014) was created to further educate and train High School Students who are actively pursuing the chance to become the doctors of tomorrow.