Osteopathic Schools and Research Inquiry

[embracepeace]

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Hello lovely SDNers!

I was wondering if you guys knew which DO school have excellent research opportunities? Or, for current students, does your school give you the opportunity to pursue research? Is it easy to find these opportunities for clinical or bench research?

I understand that, for match, residencies are placing some importance on research experience so I was wondering about these opportunities at different osteopathic schools.

 

[joyfulll]

I had the same question during my interviews. I learned that many(not all!) schools do have research opportunities; however, they are not as abundant as in MD schools. If you are interested, I was told by both KCOM and KCUMB, you can always get involved. I think most students are not that eager to pursue those opportunities, but if you are, you shouldn't have a problem finding something to do. It may be not one of your top interests, but oh well! You can talk to science faculty, see what they do and, in some schools, even choose research as an elective class. I haven't started school yet, but it's what I've learned by now. I hope it helps 🙂

 

[Goro]

Off the top of my head, we're pretty good at my own school, but these immeditately come to mind

TCOM
TUCOM-CA
PCOM
OH-COM (an anatomist had a cover article in Science some time ago!)

Late edits added:
NYIT-COM
KC-COM
I just remembered reviewing AOA grant proposals from scientists at these institutions. Mea culpa!

Hello lovely SDNers!

I was wondering if you guys knew which DO school have excellent research opportunities? Or, for current students, does your school give you the opportunity to pursue research? Is it easy to find these opportunities for clinical or bench research?

I understand that, for match, residencies are placing some importance on research experience so I was wondering about these opportunities at different osteopathic schools.

 

[embracepeace]

Thanks, guys! For those that are at the more research heavy schools, how do you allocate your time with classwork and research? Or is it mostly in the summer?

 

[DrEnderW]

Touro COM NY and NYIT will have excellent opportunities because you can take advantage of the ridiculously large academic community in NYC.

I've had no trouble getting research opportunities and pubs in various labs in NYC.

 

[WaylonS]

Touro COM NY and NYIT will have excellent opportunities because you can take advantage of the ridiculously large academic community in NYC.

I've had no trouble getting research opportunities and pubs in various labs in NYC.

Not to put you on the spot, but could you elaborate. According to the NIH's RePORTer, Touro NY received no NIH grants in 2013. NYIT received 3 grants only totaling 560k. Granted there are numerous foundations that dole out grants, but NIH funding is the standard metric for measuring an institution's research funding.

Yeah, several DO schools have more research than others, but the top funded DO schools have about as much funding as the lowest tier allopathic schools.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

Not to put you on the spot, but could you elaborate. According to the NIH's RePORTer, Touro NY received no NIH grants in 2013. NYIT received 3 grants only totaling 560k. Granted there are numerous foundations that dole out grants, but NIH funding is the standard metric for measuring an institution's research funding.

Yeah, several DO schools have more research than others, but the top funded DO schools have about as much funding as the lowest tier allopathic schools.

There's about 10 Universities in NYC and many biotech firms. Plenty of them will be happy to have a med student come in.

 

[cliquesh]

TCOM has around $30million in research funds. UNJ around $19 million. OU around $11 million, MSU $8million, new England $7 million. Midwestern and AtSU are both around $4 million.

 

[DrEnderW]

Not to put you on the spot, but could you elaborate. According to the NIH's RePORTer, Touro NY received no NIH grants in 2013. NYIT received 3 grants only totaling 560k. Granted there are numerous foundations that dole out grants, but NIH funding is the standard metric for measuring an institution's research funding.

Yeah, several DO schools have more research than others, but the top funded DO schools have about as much funding as the lowest tier allopathic schools.

Not putting me on the spot at all. What I meant is that the beauty of NYC is the amount of opportunities that are available there. I was able to get research at two different institutions and publish within my own as well. That's the advantage of NYC.

There are other routes of funding besides NIH as well, although I agree it's the common metric.

 

[SurgeDO]

Research will be there as long as you are willing to look for it.

 

[embracepeace]

Another question, will residencies look at the research you've done before entering med school (it's all published and it's bench research)? Or do they look at more clinical research during med school? In regards to the type of research during med school (bench vs clinical), is one more "valued" above the other?

Also, thank you all for your responses and information!

 

[WaylonS]

TCOM gets around $30million a year in NIH. UNJ gets around $19 million. OU gets around $11 million, MSU gets $8million, new England gets $7 million. Midwestern and AtSU are both around $4 million.

The top 10 medical schools by NIH funding get more than $280 million per year.

I'm curious where your number come from, according to the NIH's website, here are the numbers for some of the schools over the past few years http://report.nih.gov/

TCOM

2011: $13,645,000
2012: $13,991,000
2013: $10,573,000

UMDNJ-DO/Rowan

2011: $1,292,000
2012: $1,373,000
2013: $897,000

Ohio University:

2011: $2,973,000
2012: $2,310,000
2013: $2,429,000

UNECOM:

2011: $891,000
2012: $3,302,000
2013: $2,906,000

Midwestern (IL)

2011: $363,000
2012: $0
2013: $459,000

ATSU

2011: $210,000
2012: $212,000
2013: $208,000


For reference, here are the top 10 med schools by NIH funding in 2013

1. JHU $558,187,000
2. UCSF
3. Penn
4. UW
5. Michigan
6. Pitt
7. UNC
8. UCSD
9. Stanford
10. Yale $343,084,000


Here are the NIH funding level for several "low-tier" MD schools in 2013 (FYI, I did not exclude funding from engineering, public health, pharmacy, etc, however, these awards tend to be small relative to the med school's total. I also did not do these exclusions at any of the DO schools or the top-10 schools listed above)

NYMC $7,917,000
Creighton $7,982,000
RFU $8,061,000
Howard $8,290,000
Albany: $9,438,000
SLU $13,802,000
Loyola $19,451,000
Meharry $20,382,000
Moreouse $27,800,000
Drexel $33,720,000
Rush: $42,532,000
Georgetown $47,304,000
Jefferson $47,642,000
Temple $54,648,000
Tulane $56,415,000
Tufts ~$70,000,000
GWU $75,697,000
Wake Forest $89,840,000
BU ~$135,000,000
USC $184,25,000

 

[cliquesh]

I'm curious where your number come from, according to the NIH's website, here are the numbers for some of the schools over the past few years http://report.nih.gov/

I was wrong about NIH funding. My numbers came from a 2007 report in regards to total research funds.

I've always used http://www.brimr.org/NIH_Awards/2012/NIH_Awards_2012.htm when looking at medical school specific funding, but, to the best of knowledge, DO schools are not listed.

"In 1989, only three COMs received research awards totaling more than $1 million (Table 5). These schools were MSUCOM, UMDNJ-SOM, and UNTHSC/TCOM. By 1999, PCOM and UNECOM had also passed the cumulative total of $1 million for research funding (Table 5). However, the number of COMs reporting more than $1 million of research funds increased to 12 (60%) by 2004 (Table 5). The most successful of these was UNTHSC/TCOM with a total of $31.9 million received in research funding

The NIH provided the largest amount of research funds to COMs in 1999, at $14.7 million, and also in 2004, at $60.4 million (Table 2). In addition, the NIH produced the second largest number of research grants by a single funder in 1999 (80 awards) and in 2004 (115 awards) (Table 1). The average NIH research grant to COMs increased from $183,750 in 1999 to $525,046 in 2004 (Table 3), while the percentage of NIH funding to COMs increased from 54.2% of all funding in 1999 to 59.6% of all funding in 2004 (Table 4).

In 2004, the combined NIH funding to all COMs ranked 163rd among the funding totals provided by the NIH to the top 500 research institutions. In 1999, the combined NIH funding awarded to the COMs ranked 202nd among all NIH-funded institutions, revealing that there was a modest improvement for COMs in funding rank between 1999 and 2004.2,13-15

Principal investigators with PhD degrees at COMs received the largest total amount of funding in 1999 ($20.6 million) and in 2004 ($83.9 million) (Table 8). The average dollar amount awarded to PhD-holding PIs was $104,625 in 1999 and $319,050 in 2004.

For PIs with DO degrees at COMs, the total dollar amount awarded in 1999 was $4.4 million. That amount increased to $12.6 million by 2004 (Table 8). The average dollar amount awarded to DO-holding PIs was $52,195 in 1999 and $93,802 in 2004 (Table 8).

Allopathic medical schools command the vast majority of the NIH research grant budget and also have much larger faculty numbers than do COMs. In 1996, it was reported that, with an average number of 73 full-time faculty members, COMs were staffed at levels approximately 10% that of their allopathic counterparts who were able to maintain average full-time staffing levels of 716.18-20 This disparity worsened by 2004, when the number of full-time faculty members at COMs was only 8.6% that of allopathic medical schools.19,20 Part of this apparent trend may be the result of the initial small faculty numbers at the new, privately funded COMs that have opened since 1995."