about the PrIMES mission by mei hong liu
The Program for Individualized Mentorship Education Services (PrIMES) was founded in 2018 by Dr. Caitlin Hoffman, MD, and Dr. Benjamin Hartley, MD. The mission of PrIMES is to reduce the healthcare education diversity gap through a mentorship program that directly targets modifiable and surmountable challenges of Under Represented Individuals in Medicine (URiM) to meet essential Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) benchmarks. In 1985, Margaret Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services, published a report on Black and Minority Health, that detailed the differences in health outcomes of different ethnicities in the United States. In that report, she also stated the percentage of Black medical students decreased from 6.3% (1974-1975) to 5.5% (1983-1984). The recent percentages of black students in medical school have marginally exceeded the percentages from 1974-1975. In 2015-2016, the percentage of Black or African American medical students was 6.18% and of Hispanic, Latino or of Spanish Origin was 5.55%. In 2019-2020, the percentage of Black medical students is 7.31% and of Hispanic medical students is 6.54% (AAMC). Many programs and initiatives have been established in an attempt to address the lack of diversity of physicians we train to serve a population as diverse as the one in the United States. Mentoring in Medicine (MIM) is one of these programs that was created to aid disadvantaged and low-income students in their path to becoming healthcare professionals. Despite increasing interest amongst these students to pursue this path, MIM noticed a severe drop in interest amongst students during their first two years of their undergraduate education. PrIMES aims to address this drop in interest amongst freshman and sophomore pre-med undergraduates by pairing them with current medical students and residents to assist students in meeting the benchmarks that are posed by the AAMC that demonstrates a student’s readiness for medical school. These benchmarks include the core competencies demonstrating proficiency of skills in interpersonal relationships, intrapersonal relationships, thinking and reasoning, and science, as well as, numerical measures such as GPA, grade trends, and MCAT score. In addition to the benchmarks provided by the AAMC, focus groups were conducted of invested parties that included high school students to current health professionals asking discussion questions based off of the admission criteria used by the AAMC regarding what are the perceived barriers to the medical school application process and successful matriculation into medical school. These responses, in addition to the criteria published by the AAMC, were used to create a targeted curriculum for the mentees. In addition to this curriculum, PrIMES also uses pre- and post-assessments to quantitatively and qualitatively track the students’ progress, with a primary endpoint of medical school matriculation and secondary endpoints of advancement in AAMC-defined metrics and increased confidence in preparedness.
Heckler, M. (1985). Report of the Secretary's Task Force on Black & Minority Health. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. 2019 FACTS: Applicants and Matriculants Data. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/students-residents/interactive-data/2019-facts-applicants-and-matriculants-data.
