The Health Systems Science Project

What is the Health Systems Science Project?

The Health Systems Science Project (HSSP) is the UCR School of Medicine's flagship medical student inquiry course. Developed with funding from the American Medical Association's Accelerating Change in Medical Education Innovation grant, this program provides an innovative and comprehensive inquiry education process for our medical students.*

This longitudinal, team-centered, and project-based curriculum takes medical students through the process of designing and developing a research project over the course of three years.

The HSSP provides a launchpad for students to develop confidence and competence in core research skills so that they are better able to conduct independent research in the future.

*The AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Innovation Grant Program provided $20,000 in grant funding to make the course design process possible. However, the AMA had no input on the design, development, perspectives, or content of the course.

Program Benefits

Students who learn to conduct research in this way will:

Produce research that is of higher quality and more enduring value to the scientific and local communities
Be better able to critique the research that they encounter in the rest of their career
Learn to work in teams to accomplish these goals in the three-year program
Be more attractive to future residency programs
Be better able to mentor and support the next generation of physician-scientists

Program Goals

In successfully completing the Health Systems Science project, students will achieve the following goals:

They will promote Health Justice and patient-centered care in the community
They will contribute important scientific knowledge to the community and beyond
They will develop their own expertise in a facet of scholarship that will serve them and their patients in the long-term

Program Objectives

In successfully completing the Health Systems Science project, students will be able to:

Describe the process and purpose of each phases of the research cycle
Develop a command of the scholarly literature around their chosen topic
Demonstrate skills in a chosen qualitative, quantitative, or other research paradigm
Identify how their subject of study fits into the activity of the broader health system
Analyze and synthesize data to inform features of medical practice
Provide valuable knowledge to their community partners and preceptors

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