Public policy/health research?

[nynh19]

Hi,
I'm a sophomore looking to get more involved in research. Last year I volunteered in my advisors lab where I did some basic stuff like PCR and plating. It was okay but I didn't really enjoy it. I don't think I had the background in biology or genetics to fully understand it quite yet.
Now I'm taking a public health course that I'm loving. My professor suggested I get involved in research at the University's school of public policy. I'm interested in rural health policy and vulnerable families. Would this count as research when applying to medical school? I know it's not typical lab science stuff but I enjoy it and it's important to me. Would it keep me competitive with others who did research in biology and chemistry?

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[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Research experience is to show you how science works. It doesn't have to be wet lab research to do that. I have several projects I've worked on and the one that taught me the most about how research is done was in applied math.

 

[gamieg]

yes.

 

[eteshoe]

Unless you're dead set on something like an MD/PhD, that experience should suffice.

 

[aldol16]

What you should be getting from your research experiences isn't practice in running Western blots, PCR, cell culture, etc. because there's no guarantee you'll be using those techniques in the future. What you should be getting is experience in how to design projects and experiments, from coming up with a hypothesis to testing that hypothesis and communicating your results. You should come away from it with a good sense of how the scientific process works. So you could imagine that a public health/health policy research student might be in a better place than a molecular biology research student if the former can really articulate how he/she applied the scientific process to answer a question and the latter basically did all grunt work with no original or creative thought involved.

 

[nynh19]

Thanks to everyone who replied. I really appreciate the insight. Happy Thanksgiving!