AAMC Reporter: December 2005

Larry Keith, M.S., Director, Medical Education Development Program, and Assistant Dean of Admissions, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine

From College to Med School: Help for the Disadvantaged

Back in 1996, when T.J. Sutton was a freshman football player at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), he figured his life was set. "I was always good in athletics, and I assumed that would be my way," he recalls. But when significant playing time failed to materialize, he realized that an athletic career was not in the cards.

Fast-forward nine years and meet Tamaurus Sutton, M.D., M.P.H., now a first-year resident at Emory University Hospital, where he focuses on emergency medicine. Without hesitation, Sutton (who no longer calls himself "T.J.") credits one man with his accomplishment — Larry Keith, M.S., director of UNC's Medical Education Development (MED) Program and assistant dean of admissions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

"The MED program instilled the confidence in me that I could make it in medical school," Sutton explains. "It gave me an opportunity to show what I could do academically, and gave me a chance to prove I could handle the rigors. Mr. Keith and the MED program is one of the best things to ever happen to me."

Sutton is not alone. Keith has helped hundreds of disadvantaged students from many ethnic backgrounds since 1976, when he began a teaching career as a biology instructor at a rural Virginia middle school, and he has done the same thing in the MED program, which he took over in 1992.Widely recognized for his achievements, Keith has received several awards, including the Outstanding Service Award from the North Carolina Health Careers Access Program (HCAP), the Spectrum Award for Contributions to Medical Education, the Kaiser Permanente Excellence in Teaching Award, and the Merit Award from UNC's Black Faculty Caucus.

"I think this job comes easy to me because I've been where these people are," says Keith. "I'm from a single-parent home and I've lived in the projects. I understand the struggle of trying to be successful."

'High Expectations'

Lily May Johnson, an AAMC manager who works in the Minority Affairs Section of the Group on Student Affairs, says Keith's compassion and tenacity have deeply affected students' lives. He has succeeded, she says, because "he combines high expectations with compassion. He never lets his students off the hook, and he provides an environment in which they become increasingly confident of their abilities."

Keith says MED and similar programs have made great progress in the fight to get more disadvantaged and minority students into medical school, but he believes that much work remains. He points, for example, to HCAP — as well as to Title VII of the Public Health Service Act — as areas that need greater political and financial support.

"We've come a long way, but we still have a long way to go," Keith says. "Now isn't the time to draw back the money. Here in America we need to keep growing our own doctors, and we need to keep reaching out to all disadvantaged people."

Sponsored by UNC's medical and dental schools, the MED program recruits students, particularly from minority and disadvantaged populations, for potential careers in health care. It also offers a summer program to help students compete for admission to medical and other health professions schools.

"What we were seeing," Keith says, "was minority students in medical schools having the same kinds of problems. For example, at the undergraduate level a lot of minority students study alone. We teach them to study in groups. It's a learning-skills training session. They really have to adapt to a studying schedule."

Like basic military training, the MED program is designed to foster camaraderie among participants and identify those who might not be well suited for medical school.

"Once they go through the summer program, they know each other," says Keith. "When there's a familiar face, that bond helps them get through the first and second year of medical school. Minorities in medical schools used to feel kind of isolated, and that led to academic problems. Also, some students find out through the MED program that medical school is not for them. So they go do something else. Basically we try to help them out before they get discouraged during medical school."

Financed by the State of North Carolina and the Bureau of Health Professions in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the MED program has been hugely successful. Since its inception in 1974, 88 percent of its 1,886 students have gone on to apply to health-related professional schools, and 90 percent of the applicants have gained admission, mostly to medical or dental schools.

The MED program's cornerstone is a nine-week summer school curriculum — "nine weeks of hell," as Keith puts it — that includes biology, anatomy, and other health care staples, as well as help with interviewing and test-taking skills. The goal is not only to teach students the basics of science, Keith explains, but also to teach them how to become better students.

Keith says both the program and his approach are like self-fulfilling prophecies, reaching far beyond today's medical students.

"The data show, plain and clear, that people of color understand the backgrounds and realities" of minority groups and where they live, Keith says; so medical students who have that understanding are likely to return to such areas to practice medicine. "And as students and doctors," he adds, "they serve as role models. Minorities see one person make it, and they say, 'That person is like me. Maybe I can make it, too.' "

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