Epidemiology for MD/PhDers

[honeygrits]

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I am strongly interested in doing my phd work in an epi department. I was just wondering if there were any other folks out there doing this and what there experiences are. I keep hearing of people that manage to incorporate lab work and clinical work into their epi dissertation work.

Also I am interested in ID's and public health.

Thanks

 

[bluegrass_druid]

I don't really know anything about this either, but I would be interested in hearing more, as well.

 

[epimudphuder]

I'm happy you asked this question. I was about to start a thread concerning Epidemiology, because last year when I was applying I had no idea this was an option for MST programs. I thought basic science was the only way to go. Very fortunately, I happened to interview (and get accepted) to a MSTP school that has (and actually encourages this option!). There are many, many positives for going this route.

At first impression, it appears as though a MD and PhD in Epidemiology may actually work synergistically in a carefully designed career. This is very important point to make, because it seems far too often that the opposite is the case. This is a major selling point to me.

Second, after talking with the Epidemiology faculty at the school I'll be attending next fall, it appears that for summer "lab" rotations there are many options available. Some of what we discussed included a month at the WHO in Geneva! Also, when I discussed with them potential thesis topics, they made it sound as if the thesis topic (as long as the methodology is sound) is completely up to me. So collecting thesis data in a third world country or at this medical school are both valid options.

Also, in this program I'll be attending, the somewhat flexible timeline is arranged as follows: 2yr md, 2yr PhD, 2yr MD (w/ data collection for thesis spread throughout this time period) and 1 yr PhD (or less to write up the thesis).

Please let me know if you have any other questions! Although I haven't started the program yet, I would love to help.

 

[fantasty]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=127975&highlight=epidemiology
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=178226&highlight=epidemiology

I'm in our MSTP program working in epi, and we've had previous students in epi and biostats. Every year since I've arrived, we've had 1-2 interested applicants. Although in general, folks think MSTP's are strictly for lab research only, I argue that epi is really the core of translational research, which is part of the mission of MSTPs. And, even within epi, there are lots of opportunities for moleculer/genetic epi, infectious disease lab work, environmental epi/toxicology, and clinical laboratory research. Most of my work has been in secondary data analysis, but I have designed some lab research protocols (as have my other epi-friends).

In our case (as mentioned on these threads), we have more grad school course work than other MSTP students (I had six semesters of grad school courses, compared to the typical 2-4), but I'm still on the same time table to finish as most of my entering class (I had to do somethings that were atypical for epi students, such as form my dissertation committee in the first year of grad school, etc). But, for the most part, I following the general rules of the MSTP (I did 2 research rotations with different faculty, etc). I didn't get an MS or an MPH, although I could have along the way if I wanted to.

The other threads mention some schools that have epi, but of the top of my head, I know Yale, UCSD, and UAB also let their MSTPers do epi.

 

[mendel121]

I am doing an "old fashioned" MD/Phd, I just finished the PhD in Epid, and will start fresh in Med school in the fall. I know that at Michigan there is a lot of Epid goin on that is lab based, plenty non-lab based, and plenty that is both (check out the cancer center at UM). My thesis was almost exclusively molecular and some genetic epi. Don't let any curmudgeon MDs tell you that Epid isn't appropriate for an MD/PhD - I'm doing it and I know of one other that did it in the MSTP at UM. Epid needs more people like us, and MD/PhDers need more Epid people, EPid is the interface of the "basic sciences" and what MDs do everyday, to me there aren't many better fields for an MD/PhD.

 

[nscs]

From having traveled for interviews this year and researched many programs, I've heard that Emory, UCSD and University of Washington have good Epi programs (not that there aren't others I'm sure, but those are three I know of). Being a San Diego native and having worked at a health center one mile from Mexico, I can tell you that the San Ysidro Border crossing is the busiest in the world, which poses all sorts of health issues. There were at least two students doing epi at U Wash and someone was even doing a PhD in Geography on a project that had to do with the actual physical location and distribution of health care centers/providers/etc and the health of residents plotted geographically (that's the gist of it anyway). I didn't quite get it all but it just shows that you can do some pretty interesting and important things outside of basic science. Emory stands out because of its affliation with the CDC.