A hundred momentous destinations

There’s nothing quite like the excitement of Match Day, even when all the action is online. The roughly 100 graduates and graduates-to-be of the UMKC School of Medicine found out by email, just after 11 a.m. Friday, where they will spend the next stage of their medical careers.

Dean Mary Anne Jackson, M.D., addressed students, their families, faculty and friends with a video message. She congratulated the UMKC Class of 2021 for its hard work the past six years and especially during the past challenging year of COVID-19 shutdowns and other disruptions.

“This ceremony, which you know is a rite of passage for medical students across the country, is even more significant this year,” Jackson said. “I know the uncertainty of the pandemic has created disruptions for you on your medical school journey, from a pause in clinical rotations at the beginning, the elimination of away electives, the shortages of PPE that created changes in how we cared patients, and a move to virtual formats for didactic lectures, and everything from residency interviews to our most special ceremonies including this one.”

Jackson said the docents, faculty and staff were proud of the Class of 2021 and appreciated its members’ focus, flexibility and resilience.

“As you scatter across the country, I know you will continue to make us proud by demonstrating the knowledge, kindness, empathy, compassion and professionalism you’ve learned here,” Jackson said.

As they did a year ago, students had to celebrate individually, but many did so at home with friends and family.

2021 UMKC School of Medicine Match List

Half of the UMKC class will be headed to a primary care residency in internal medicine, family medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, or pediatrics. That exceeds the national average and is in line with the school’s mission to provide primary care for the Kansas City area, Missouri and the rest of the Midwest.

The students won assignments in 22 states, from California to New York and Washington state to Florida. Missouri had 26 of the placements, followed by 10 in Texas, eight in Florida, six each in Kansas and Illinois, five in California and four each in Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, New York and Ohio.

And, as usual, some are headed to the top names in medicine, including three to Mayo and two to the Cleveland Clinic. Twenty-four will stay in the Kansas City area, most of them at UMKC and its affiliate hospitals.

Internal medicine was the top category with 32 placements, followed by 10 in family medicine, nine in various types of surgery, eight in pediatrics or medicine-pediatrics, seven in emergency medicine and six in psychiatry.

Watch the video from the event

Health equity mini-grants aim to jump start collaborative research

The mini-grants are intended to foster research collaborations that improve community health.

Making access to health care more equal is a tough task, and a pandemic only makes the job tougher. To help, the UMKC Health Equity Institute is trying a new tool — mini-grants to university researchers and their community partners — to boost those efforts.

“We have about $12,000 to $15,000 to spend, and we think putting $1,000 to $2,000 in the right places could help eight to 10 projects move forward,” said Jannette Berkley-Patton, Ph.D., the director of the institute and a professor in the UMKC School of Medicine. “Sometimes help paying for study participants, software, consultants or other resources can make a real difference.”


Apply HERE for a
UMKC Health Equity Institute
Mini-Grant
Deadline is Nov. 9

Though small, the grants could be the seed money — or the Miracle-Gro® — needed to turn ideas into budding projects that encourage and measure the effectiveness of community health efforts.

The brief application for the mini-grant program is available now, and institute members are encouraging researchers and community groups to submit their joint applications. Applicants are strongly encouraged to attend a webinar Oct. 16 to learn information about the mini-grants. Important information, such as budget documents and the grant program overview, are available, as well.

Applicants will have until Nov. 9 to submit their proposals, after which finalists will be chosen. The finalists then will give short oral presentations and recipients will be chosen. The institute plans to have the funds available at the beginning of 2021.

“We’re hoping the mini-grants stimulate our researchers to be creative and to collaborate with community partners — or build relationships with new partners,” Berkley-Patton said. “The institute’s steering committee will evaluate the applications, and we hope to have applicants make a brief, but impactful, oral pitch for their proposals sometime this fall in a virtual presentation akin to “Shark Tank®.”

The idea behind the Health Equity Institute, an initiative Chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal started in April 2019, is to partner UMKC researchers with community groups, non-profits and government agencies in underserved areas on projects that aim to improve community health.

The institute, for example, is working with the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority to evaluate the impact of the city’s now-free bus service on health outcomes. The institute wants to understand whether their recruited residents’ health and overall well-being improve because they walk more and have better access to jobs and health care through the free transit system. The institute has also helped the Kansas City, Missouri, Health Department conduct COVID-19 drive-through testing by coordinating more than 90 student volunteers. The students helped with intake, traffic control and providing COVID-19 information to people seeking testing.

The institute also helped with formation of an interfaith ministers’ group, the Clergy Response Network,

founded to address COVID-19 inequities in Kansas City’s faith-based settings, and has created a church reopening checklist for clergy. The network recently received 30,000 face masks to distribute to congregations to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Berkley-Patton is a veteran of community-based health research, including studies that engage churches and other community-based organizations’ in efforts to combat health disparity issues such as HIV and other STDs, mental health, obesity and diabetes.

“We need more research projects that improve the health of people where they live, play, worship and work, and projects that can be sustained for the long haul after research shows they work,” Berkley-Patton said. “We think these mini-grants can get more projects like these up and running while engaging the community in research efforts that we hope will reduce disparities and improve health in Kansas City’s urban areas.”

For more information on the mini-grant program, visit the Health Equity Institute website.