MEDICAL EDUCATION
2026 and 2027 over the long term, and future classes may be added as well. Another element of Moritz’s recognition by the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved was his efforts to organize COVID-19 vaccine clinics and administer vaccines, both on campus and in the community. As a volunteer coordinator and member of the COVID-19 vaccine clinic leadership team, he facilitated trainings on how to give injections, coordinated student volunteer efforts, worked long hours at each clinic, and provided analysis of vaccine clinic data for internal use, reports and posters.
Medical student Brandon Moritz looks in a patient’s ear at Crossings Community Clinic in Oklahoma City.
Medical students, along with many of their peers in other colleges at the OU Health Sciences Center, care for patients at about 15 local charitable clinics. OUCHA carries out many other initiatives, including the Bridges to Access Conference, which focuses on issues concerning access to care in underserved populations, as well as the Stop the Bleed program, in which students train the community on how to use tourniquets and pack wounds in the case of a severe injury. Other activities take students into local elementary schools and community organizations to provide preventive health information. “It’s been really life-giving work,” Moritz said. “That’s something one of my mentors told me before I started medical school — to pursue the part of medicine that fills you up and reminds you of why you pursued medicine in the first place. One of the greatest needs in our country is primary care, especially in communities that have very few doctors and resources.” Moritz has developed an additional partnership with Crossings Community Clinic in Oklahoma City, where he came on staff before he began medical school. He developed a gap year internship for pre-med and pre-health students to gain experience before they begin their health profession education. The program, now in its third year, is paying off — interns from the first two years are being admitted to medical school. He also worked with the clinic staff to design a chronic disease management program focusing primarily on patients with hypertension and diabetes. As part of that work, he helped to hire a social worker to provide additional resources to patients. In addition, he wrote grants that allowed the clinic to purchase colposcopy equipment for women’s health and a spirometer to assess lung function in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This year, Moritz began serving as a Graduate Research Assistant for both OU College of Medicine Academic Affairs and the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs at the OU Health Sciences Center. As part of that role, he is conducting a study to gather data about whether student involvement with underserved populations influences their eventual career and volunteer decisions. He will be following the Classes of 2025,
With a little over a year left in his undergraduate medical education, Moritz is planning for his future. He hopes to match into a combined residency of internal medicine/ pediatrics and join a program with a major emphasis on caring for underserved communities. Ultimately, he sees his career at the intersection of clinical care, conducting research, and educating the next generation of physicians about the importance of caring for those who historically have been overlooked and underserved. “I’m a major proponent of an asset-based approach — looking inside a community to see the talents and resources that are already there, then working alongside them to create change from the inside out. That is a more sustainable approach than pouring money in from the outside or telling a community what they need,” he said. “These communities are filled with incredibly smart and gifted people who have been marginalized and, because of that, don’t have the same resources and access to healthcare that other communities do. I am a far better person for having been given the opportunity to listen and learn from them. They’re my neighbors and are equally deserving of having access to the resources and services that can help them lead a fulfilling and healthy life. Their well-being is my well-being.”
College’s Student Satisfaction Rate Above 75th Percentile The OU College of Medicine received impressive results from the most recent student satisfaction survey conducted by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The college’s overall student satisfaction rate is again above the 75th percentile. Notably, more than 70% of courses and clerkships were ranked in the top quartile nationally, and 33% of those were above the 90th percentile. The AAMC sends the survey each spring to all graduating medical students; the recent results reflect the input from the Class of 2021. This survey is especially important to schools of allopathic medicine because the accrediting body, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), places as much weight on student satisfaction scores as any other outcome,
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