Lindsay Royston — RYSE MED HBCU Track Research (Undergraduate Research, 6 points)

This past summer, I spent my time as a Student Mentor and HBCU Research Track Scholar in the RYSE MED Program at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. For the research project, I, along with a team of other HBCU student mentors, completed a mixed-methods evaluation of pre-health programs at HBCUs – and it was seriously a game-changer. The biggest win, hands down, was the sheer power of authentic advocacy. As an HBCU pre-health student, connecting my story with the lived experiences of other graduates and then sitting down with institutional officials to drop actionable suggestions? That was huge. We weren't just passively collecting data; we were getting our peers' voices heard on everything from standardized testing, professional school prep, to mental health resources. Yet, every study has its constraints, and ours suffered from the tyranny of the clock. This project was completed in a time crunch – I regret we couldn't conduct the deeper interview dives required to fully unlock the institutional secrets for improvement. Synthesizing the data led to the inevitable realization: persistent systemic gaps in graduate-level preparedness exist, which are often concealed by surface-level metrics. The synthesis confirmed the urgent need for our tiered solutions. The real win was presenting these findings to the high school scholars we mentored over the summer, institutional officials, and hospital stakeholders, which instantly transformed our research into a direct mandate for evidence-based reform across the entire academic pipeline. This experience was a pivotal refinement in my core mission of becoming a physician, as it armed me with the ability to be a changemaker who employs culturally-informed solutions to make impactful change.

By Lindsay Royston