The theory of aligned ambition posits that adolescents' career aspirations are shaped by both contextual and attitudinal factors. Minority students are less likely to exhibit career-specific knowledge, realistic attitudes, and successful behaviors, which could exacerbate racial disparities in the health care workforce. This article describes the theoretical grounding and preliminary implementation of an intervention designed to promote aligned ambition from an early stage of career development. The Training Early Achievers for Careers in Health Research Program provides exposure to realistic career experiences and multitiered mentorship, with the goal of cultivating aligned ambition toward clinical research careers among minority high school students. We discuss program operations in detail and consider whether this method can be used nationally to promote entry of minority youth into clinical research careers.

International experiences are increasingly popular among medical students, but few have been rigorously evaluated. We used ESM to characterize the experience of medical students participating in the one-month University of Chicago Geographic Medicine Scholars Program (GMSP) in Hyderabad, India. Participants wore watches programmed to randomly beep eight times daily, during the first and third weeks. When alerted, students reported their activity and rated their level of engagement and emotion in booklets. All 11 student participants responded to 59% of 816 alerts. 41% of beeps occurred during GMSP formal structured activities (i.e., lecture, clinic). Students reported structured activities to be more interesting (6.05 versus 4.14; P < 0.001), more important to their future goals (6.48 versus 5.71; P < 0.001), more challenging (3.75 versus 2.48; P < 0.001), and more enjoyable (6.08 versus 5.36; P < 0.001) than unstructured activities. Our results show that future global health efforts should augment the use of structured activities.

No abstract