Dozens of students from high schools representing several counties throughout eastern North Carolina visited Campbell University on Feb. 22.
The students were there, on HUMP Day 2025, to learn and understand about medicine, to explore its possibilities.
For the world, their community. For themselves.
On this Saturday, the students filled the halls, classrooms and simulation labs of the Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine (CUSOM). Learning from medical students and faculty, through demonstrations, hands-on and interactive experiences.
HUMP Day — Helping Understand the Medical Profession — is an annual event and part of an initiative under the large umbrella of the Student National Medical Association (SNMA).
The student chapter of the SNMA at Campbell led the effort Saturday, as it has done for some 10 years now.
The mission of Campbell’s medical school is serving the underserved. Training physicians to bring care to those rural communities and, ultimately, remaining there to live and to work, throughout North Carolina and the Southeastern U.S.
The mission for Campbell’s SNMA chapter is diversifying medicine, and this day is in line with that mission, says Tamera Hutchinson of North Brunswick, New Jersey, a second-year medical student at Campbell who took a lead in organizing the event.
“We’re taking them through a day in the life of a medical student,” she said.
Campbell students representing myriad medical clubs on campus, as well staff and faculty, led the teens on an up-close and interactive tour, consisting of simulated medical procedures, techniques and learning modules woven throughout the med school.
Students, for example, learned about emergency medicine and applied tourniquets, peered at ultrasound images and got a better understanding of the intricacies and marvels of childbirth.
The event represents a veritable welcome to the expansive and fascinating world of medicine. For many, it’s an introduction to Campbell, its osteopathic medical school and the diverse field of health sciences.
Asia Hilliard of Mocksville is also a second-year medical student and SNMA club member at Campbell. Hilliard said the club was intent on encouraging CUSOM students who grew up in local N.C. communities to volunteer at the HUMP Day event.
“This is a wonderful resource for this community. Even if you’re from a small town, you can do whatever you want,” Hillard said about the med school and the opportunities it provides.
As research shows, the earlier students are exposed to careers in medicine, the more likely they are to pursue a career in medicine, said Dr. Tiffany Lowe Clayton, assistant professor, Department of Family Medicine, and director of Clinical Site Engagement and Development-Clinical Affairs.
“The Student National Medical Association has really tried to open a pipeline,” Lowe Clayton said.
CUSOM has been instrumental in giving SNMA access to that gateway, exposing students early in their academic careers to a potential career in medicine and health sciences, she said.
“The students are from multiple counties, they are from communities that are historically underrepresented. And it’s really being able to help them come into Campbell … to be able to have the opportunity to talk to everyone — from medical students to physicians to admissions counselors.”
To learn and to discover.
“It’s Campbell’s mission to serve the rural and underserved communities,” Lowe Clayton said. “So ,if we can get students from these rural communities to…come here and be exposed and, hopefully one day, some of them are going to come to medical school here, and some of them will then go back into their communities.”