What Are Service-Research Projects?
Unlike our shadowing programs, which focus on observing medical doctors in a hospital across multiple specialties, Atlantis Service-Research Projects (SRPs) are more internship-like. They’re an opportunity to learn full-time from an Atlantis Project Leader, inside an elite healthcare organization, in a real project with members of management and administration, while performing a highly impactful service – a unique mix.
Both of our two main program types, shadowing and SRPs, take place in exciting cities, and have a similar cost. But SRPs are very different from shadowing. Instead of spending, for instance, 3 weeks shadowing doctors in a hospital (which is how most Atlantis programs operate), SRPs have you spend that time in an office or similar work setting.
Together with other pre-health students, and under the direction of a Project Leader, participants generate research and insights that are beneficial to the host organization (which is always an elite institution with a recognizable brand).
The topic can be anything that is helpful to the host organization, but the organization is always directly or indirectly related to healthcare, and all Atlantis program participants are pre-health students (usually pre-med).
There are three benefits that SRPs bring to pre-health students: service, research, and brand name. Let’s address each of these in order in the sections that follow.
Service Opportunity
Participants learn from an Atlantis Project Leader who is in charge of the leadership and educational value of the program. But this learning happens by doing. Specifically, by doing a project that is impactful to the partner host organization. The project scope will vary from partner to partner, but all projects involve data-driven research, developing problem-solving frameworks, and communicating possible answers to high-level questions that the organization is facing. Projects are never focused on questions that leverage subject-matter expertise (i.e., the kind you’d have as an MD or a proven hospital administrator or a Ph.D. in something like Public Health); Service-Research Projects simply leverage smarts and a willingness to contribute to a great team and project, analyzing, researching, and presenting insights to management.
Unique Research Experience
According to the pre-med advising office of Columbia University, an Ivy League Institution, “Medical school admissions deans will often say that they like to see that applicants have ‘exposed themselves to some methodology for producing new knowledge.’ They define this very broadly and thus it is not just limited to wet lab experience.” This is not an endorsement of our programs specifically, of course. Many other pre-med advisors suggest the same idea that Columbia does.
In the very unlikely event that you’re applying to MD-PhD joint programs, or to the few schools that specifically require academic research, our program’s model won’t meet that requirement (though it will very likely contribute in different ways). However, if you are applying to the majority of MD programs, which do not require (but may encourage) research, then our model may contribute to your application as a form of creating new knowledge in healthcare.
It will not be the kind of new knowledge creation that a Ph.D. student would produce, but the kind that a consultant advising a hospital non-profit management team on their strategy might use, for example. Think more practical and broad, less narrow and maybe less precise. In the end, only you can tell whether this experience may benefit your own unique circumstances.
Brand Name Recognition
Atlantis Service-Research Project alumni are in the small minority of applicants and entering med/PA school students, under 10%, who have actually participated in a real project in healthcare at an organizational/administrative level, much less at an elite institution, known for being a leader in its field. They are also some of the few prospective med/PA students who have experienced the type of leadership and management work that will increasingly be asked of them as they advance in their careers. This perspective of Atlantis Service-Research Projects alumni will be a unique contribution to any med/PA school cohort.
Service-Research Projects: One Pre-Med
Alumna’s Perspective
Past Project Example
Date: 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Healthcare Organization: Children’s National Hospital, Washington, D.C., one of the best pediatric hospitals in the U.S.
Context: Preparation for the 2021 Community Health Needs Assessment, measuring Childhood Opportunity in D.C. metropolitan neighborhoods and working with other organizations to promote racial equity in healthcare.
Executive Summary: Students measured what were major drivers behind low levels of childhood opportunity (measured by COI, Childhood Opportunity Index). They provided a historical perspective on D.C. neighborhoods, focusing on racial equity, and created community engagement tools.
Deliverables: Interim & Final presentations, Tableau visualizations, manuscript, interview guides including engagement tools (e.g., email & social media templates), focus group templates, stakeholder master list including their contacts, and historical write-up of D.C. neighborhoods.
One Consequence: Atlantis and Children’s National Hospital institutionally co-presented on this model and project at several leading academic conferences (including the very reputable ASPPH, where we presented in 2021).
A Real Project With Real Results
Our programs focus on learning-by-doing, specifically by producing research in the form of a slide deck that is presented to managers of the partner organization.
A Service-Research Project that Ran During the Pandemic, Was About the Pandemic, and Took Place in the Former Epicenter of the Pandemic in the Western World
At the San Matteo Hospital in Pavia, Italy, during the summer of 2021, Atlantis ran a Service-Research Project focused on the mental health of healthcare workers during the pandemic. Students learned from an Atlantis Project Leader by doing a project with this hospital. The project was done with and for some well-known doctors who were there when the pandemic first arrived (over a year before this Atlantis program took place). The project created analyses to support the hospital administration’s effort to improve the well-being of doctors, nurses, and all hospital staff at one of the first hospitals to fight the COVID virus outbreak in Europe and in the western world. The hospital found the work “truly remarkable and invaluable.” We expect, based on our experience, that many of the alumni of this program will be talking about their experience in medical school applications and interviews.
This experience allowed me to make a global impact on healthcare.
Some Of Our Partners
Children’s National Hospital has consistently been ranked as one of the top 10 pediatric hospitals in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1870 and serving the D.C. metro area, Children’s National is a respected leader in pediatric research and advocacy for children. It also houses the Child Health Advocacy Institute (CHAI), which was founded over 30 years ago as the first hospital-based policy center to focus on child health. Using a population health approach and managing the Child Health Data Lab, CHAI works on the ground and with policymakers to combat D.C. kids’ most pressing health issues and to address disparities in childhood opportunity. Our several past projects with CNH have all focused on CHAI.
An agency of the United Nations, UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to reach the children and young people in greatest need. The world’s largest provider of vaccines, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, safe water and sanitation, quality education and skill building, HIV prevention and treatment for mothers and babies, and the protection of children and adolescents from violence and exploitation. UNICEF is on the ground before, during, and after humanitarian emergencies, and over the past 75 years they have been leading advocates for the rights of children. Atlantis partners with UNICEF not only to benefit our students’ trajectories to medical school, but also because we believe the work of UNICEF needs to be more known to U.S. college students, as it already is to everyone in Europe, for example.
As a regional health agency, ATS Insurbia is tasked with identifying and planning for the needs of citizens in its territory by fostering the integration of healthcare services into the region. This includes facilitating contracts with public and private service providers, ensuring achievement of objectives set forth in a socio-health plan, and carrying out functions assigned to them by Regional Law.
As the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, Roche creates innovative medicines, cancer treatments, and diagnostic tests for hospitals and labs around the world. With a unique combination of strengths in its two divisions – Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics – Roche is a multinational company recognized worldwide as an elite healthcare organization.
Developing a Strategic Theme for Your Med/PA School Applications
Where you spend your time will indicate your interests and passions to schools. If you plan to make a claim as an applicant (e.g., “I may be interested in pediatrics”), make sure that you have evidence to back it up (e.g., volunteer work or internships with kids).
Having an Atlantis Service-Research Project on your resume may help you to strategize a theme for your med/PA school application. Variety and breadth are always important, but if you have a range of specialties in your bank of experience already, it can help to have a central theme. Just make sure you’re passionate about the theme, because it’s not worth it otherwise. And always make sure that your activities don’t come at the expense of your undergraduate GPA, which is crucial; a theme is never worth below-average stats. When you look at the examples below, ask yourself: if you ran a med/PA school, wouldn’t you, all else equal, want more students with unique themes, as long as they’re substantial, relevant, and meaningful themes? Here are just a few high-level examples of how themes could work:
Pediatrics
International Cooperation
Healthcare Policy
Watch the below video, where Atlantis (shadowing) alumni explain how they brought healthcare system differences to their med/PA applications to highlight their cultural competency; the same phenomenon can happen with Service-Research Projects alumni, since they also witness differences in systems in a very unique way.
Business & Healthcare
How Does Atlantis Partner with Such Elite Host Institutions, when Study Abroad Programs Generally Don’t?
Am I paying to work?
Is it fair that students can get exposure to these selective institutions by paying rather than applying to an internship there?
In the case of nonprofit hosts, how do they benefit from this?
Atlantis Has Presented the Proven, Innovative SRP Model at Several Top Healthcare Education Conferences
These several conferences include the 2021 annual meeting of the ASPPH, the top healthcare education conference in its field in the world.
Medical school admissions deans will often say that they like to see that applicants have “exposed themselves to some methodology for producing new knowledge.” They define this very broadly and thus it is not just limited to wet lab experience. A senior thesis in anthropology or a summer doing clinical research would fulfill this expectation as well as lab research.
Proven Learning Outcomes
A PhD-authored small study of approximately 100 alumni of the model that we describe here as Service-Research Projects showed that 92% progressed in several important professional competencies. Although this is a small sample, the results are promising and are aligned with what we hear from students informally.
Read More
Students ranked their progress on a range of professional competencies including:
- Assignment management
- Analytical skills
- Personal interaction (emotional intelligence)
- Ethics and professionalism
Overall, ~92% of students either “strongly agreed” (71%) or “agreed” (22%) that they had progressed on these core competencies. The overall average rating was 4.63 on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree).
Please note that the study above is a separate study from the (larger) study on the impact of Atlantis shadowing programs on (specifically) medical school competencies, even though their conclusions are similar (93% versus 92% of students progressed on key competencies).
Watch Video: 20+ Alumni Now In Med School Explain:
Atlantis Is a Major Reason I Got In Here
These students participated in shadowing programs (not Service-Research Projects), but notice how med/PA school interviewers often asked these alumni about the uniqueness of their experience comparing developed-country healthcare systems, and how these alumni believe these conversations in interviews helped them get into medical/PA schools. Service-Research Projects are even more unique than shadowing, but they also highlight healthcare system differences, so the same effect applies.