Across Harris County medical schools this year, students with passion for medicine and advocacy have received a scholarship funded by the Texas Medical Association Special Funds Foundation.
Since 1998, the Harris County Medical Society (HCMS) Alliance Scholarship has supported 372 medical students, distributing more than $488,000. The scholarship s open to all third- and fourth-year medical students in good standing at a medical school in Harris County, with funds distributed directly to the schools, where financial aid staff select recipients with the most need.
Texas medical schools’ annual tuition averages $24,924 for residents and $34,967 for nonresidents per the Association of American Medical Colleges data.
This year, scholarships went to three students from the University of Houston Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, four students from McGovern Medical School at UTHealth, and nine students from Baylor College of Medicine.
Brendan Rosamond, in his fourth year at Fertitta Family College of Medicine, grew up in Houma, La., a rural center of about 33,000 residents, requiring travel to New Orleans, Baton Rouge, or even Houston for specialty medical care.
The experience of skilled surgeons saving his mother’s life after his family moved to the Houston area led him to two foundational motivators: Becoming a surgeon to make immediate lifesaving impact and committing to developing a rural physician workforce to help those who grew up as he did.
“I could bring in and recruit people from these rural communities, because from what I’ve seen, that’s the best way to put physicians back into those rural communities,” he told Texas Medicine Today.
HCMS Alliance Scholarship recipients attending McGovern Medical School include Samantha Oglesby, who wanted to be a physician from an early age, but became a prosecutor before deciding to return to medical school.
“That work taught me how to advocate for people and how much our outward circumstances can shape who we are and how the world sees us,” she wrote to TMA. “Even while I found purpose in that career, the pull toward medicine never went away, and I eventually decided to follow it.”
Deborah Babalola, a fourth-year student at Baylor originally from Nigeria, is “dedicated to providing holistic health care to underserved communities,”
she shared in correspondence with Texas Medicine Today. It is the second year Ms. Babalola has received the award. While in medical school, “I witnessed how disparities in health care access impacts health outcomes,” which became her “driving force” in medicine, leading her to pediatrics.
“Pediatrics offers a unique opportunity to really advocate for children, who are particularly vulnerable people,” she said.
Also receiving the scholarship are, at Baylor:
At Fertitta Family College of Medicine:
At McGovern Medical School:
Learn more about TMA’s scholarship opportunities for medical students.
Phil West
Associate Editor
(512) 370-1394
phil.west[at]texmed[dot]org
Phil West is a writer and editor whose publications include the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Austin American-Statesman, and San Antonio Express-News. He earned a BA in journalism from the University of Washington and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin’s James A. Michener Center for Writers. He lives in Austin with his wife, children, and a trio of free-spirited dogs.