Ten students from the Campbell medical school and two students from the university’s Physician Assistant program will participate in the 2027 Advocacy in Medicine Student Fellowship cohort, part of the N.C. Medical Society (NCMS).
“This year’s class brings together medical and PA students from across North Carolina who are passionate about healthcare policy and making a difference for their future patients and profession,” the NCMS says on its website.
Students will gain hands-on advocacy experience, learn about North Carolina’s legislative process and connect with legislators and leaders in organized medicine, the group says.
“Fellows will also participate in the NCMS Legislative Reception and White Coat Day, giving them opportunities to put their advocacy skills into action,” the site says.
Dr. David Tolentino says he’s proud of the students for taking this step toward learning how to speak up for patients. He is dean of the Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine (CUSOM).
“These students are already recognizing that the challenges patients face often extend beyond what we can address at the bedside or in an exam room,” Tolentino says.
“This fellowship will help them understand how policy shapes those experiences and how they can have a voice in improving care. Seeing so many Campbell DO and PA students pursue this opportunity together gives me great confidence in the kind of physicians and healthcare professionals they will become.”
Representing the Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine:
Asiya Ahmed
Kaitlyn Brittingham
Michaela Brown
Christina Colon-Sanchez
Brendan Di Cerbo
Zachary Gushanas
Christian Long
Janavi Mehta
Lacey-Ann Reynolds
Nathan Walton
Representing the Master of Physician Assistant Practice:
Cheyenne Beaudette
Gracie Hirota
Other schools represented include East Carolina University-Brody School of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine and Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Student Dr. Janavi Mehta is CUSOM class of 2029 Student Government Association president.
For Mehta and her classmates, the fellowship is about learning how to best channel their voices and to put their platforms into action.
“We have ideas and experiences from our own lives,” she says, “but to learn how to bring them into the world and to measure the impact of our voice, support and ideas is what we hope to gain.
“All of us feel strongly about certain patient populations or aspects of medicine that we want to help change for the better, whether that be health insurance policies or maternal mortality rates or other topics.”
The fellowship, Mehta says, represents a path for the student doctors to integrate advocacy into their careers, to better understand healthcare policies and how they affect patients, how to lobby effectively and to proactively engage in discussions with policymakers.
“Advocacy in medicine is inherently political in today’s world, and we need to be able to navigate that landscape in order to have the most positive impact.”
The number of CUSOM students represented in the fellowship program, Mehta says, is “amazing.”
“I think it truly speaks to how CUSOM students carry themselves in the world, in that we want to do our best for patients inside medical settings and outside medical settings. It is absolutely wonderful to know that so many of my peers will be learning these skills and tools for the future, and for the present.”
She says Campbell has for the first time exposed many of its students to rural medicine and underserved populations.
“This has also motivated many of us to want to improve access to care and bridge the gaps in understanding between policy and healthcare. I am excited to take all we learn from the advocacy fellowship and apply it for CUSOM and beyond. I could not be more proud of everyone in this program representing CUSOM.”
Brendan Di Cerbo, 2029 CUSOM class president, says is impressed with med school students and their interest in advocacy and learning how they can get more involved. “This is becoming a cornerstone to proper holistic care,” Di Cerbo says. “Too often, a patient concern that deals with policy gets a response along the lines of, ‘I agree, but that’s just how it is.’
“As time progresses, healthcare policy gets more complicated and affects our patients most directly in the long run.
Sometimes those effects aren’t fully understood or considered, he says. Not necessarily with bad intent, yet they are overlooked because of gross underrepresentation of physicians and healthcare providers in the legislature.
“It’s us as future physicians who will receive feedback and concerns from patients. In order to help, we need to know what we as physicians can do and how to effectively advocate for positive change to lead to healthier, safer patients,” Di Cerbo says.
“Of course, we cannot fix everything, but this fellowship through the NCMS is our introduction to building our tool box so that we can advocate for our patients’ health and safety in the future.
“This is yet another great opportunity to learn how to become compassionate, well-rounded physicians to serve those most in need. I am very excited to learn more alongside my fantastic CUSOM and CPHS colleagues as well as those from other health professional programs from throughout our state.”
New NCMS president
The NCMS, its website says, unites, serves and represents physicians and their healthcare teams to enhance the health of North Carolinians.
On Thursday, Oct. 29, NCMS welcomed and inaugurated new NCMS President Dr. Karen L. Smith, who succeeds Dr. Carl Westcott, a general surgery specialist who has practiced for 22 years.
Smith makes history as the first African American woman to serve as NCMS president. A graduate of Hahnemann University School of Medicine, her bio says, Smith trained at National Congress of Family Physician Residents, N.C. Academy of Family Physicians, Duke University, Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, and Fellow American Academy of Family Physicians.
Tolentino and second-year student Drs. Di Cerbo and Nathan Walton traveled to Raleigh for the ceremony.
“It was also a privilege to join our students in celebrating Dr. Karen Smith’s inauguration as NCMS president,” Tolentino said. “Her historic achievement as the first African American woman to serve in this role, along with her years of caring for patients in Raeford, made this a meaningful occasion for our students to witness. I look forward to her leadership and to seeing our students become more involved in organized medicine.”
Smith has practiced since 1992, with a private practice in Raeford since 2003, specializing in family medicine.
