Sharp Index Scholarship
2023: Healing in Healthcare
Created in memory of John Madsen, who died by suicide before completing residency. The Sharp Index Scholarship program is designed to improve healthcare mental health and medical education. We award a memorial scholarship each year and a health equity scholarship, to students who are dedicated to improving medical school mental health and improving physician’s ability to combat health inequity.
Applicants for the program must meet the following requirements:
*You MUST reside in the United States of America
*You MUST either
Be part of an ethnic minority group and be seeking an MD degree
Be preparing for medical school application
Research health outcomes for those groups
Research racism and physician mental health
*Possess a cumulative grade point average of 2.5 on a 4.0 scale
*Be enrolled in or have completed education at a medical school or plan to research the education system
*Be a U.S. citizen, national, permanent resident, undocumented immigrant, or designated DACA ("Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals") recipient of the U.S.
Scholarship Applicants
Want to add to the health of medicine? Please share your story about your experience with physician suicide, burnout, racism in medicine, medical education, or what needs to come next to improve health outcomes for physicians and patients.
Stories will be judged based on 5 criteria:
Need (preference will be given to students with financial needs or other discrimination)
Personal dedication to physician well-being
Plan for the future of medicine and personal contribution to improving medicine
Professionalism
Knowledge of Physician Suicide and burnout
Interview rankings from our panel of judges, including physicians, educators, mental health experts, and patients
essays should be anywhere between 1000 and 5000 words
For more information, please contact info@sharpindex.org.
Donate to the scholarship general fund or set up a named fund. In order to support our nation’s most underserved patient populations, we must create space for, encourage and support doctors of diverse races, ethnicities, and identities. Support to staggering medical school costs are part of the solution, and additional support is needed.
Physicians from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds often find it harder to stay in medicine than to get accepted to medical school.
If you are a physician who would like to mentor and support physicians in training, please let us know your availability. Sharp Index is run by volunteers and dedicated to connecting medical students with experts.
Become a Scholarship Partner.
The vision of the Sharp Index Health Equity Scholarship is simple: by making medical education more accessible to underrepresented students, we can improve long-term health outcomes.
Sharp Index’s mission is to support physicians and clinicians and their mental health. A large part of that mission includes promoting diversity in medicine. We believe that to help our country’s most underserved patient populations, we must create the space for, encourage, and support doctors and clinicians of diverse races, ethnicities, and identities.
We need more doctors and clinicians with a variety of cultural experiences, to work with these underserved patient populations and ensure that every patient gets the highest standard of care that matches their specific needs. Scholarships are awarded at the Sharp Index Awards ceremony and on an ongoing basis throughout the year based on availability of funds.
After the scholarship, students need training and mentorship to succeed. Join Us in Making a Difference. Donate today or Join the Health Equity Consortium.
Increase the number of underrepresented physicians practicing medicine
Increase health equity for physicians and patients
Research the relationship between racism and burnout
Ensure that ethnic and other minority groups have more opportunities to pursue medical education and research
Recruit more physicians FROM the areas you want them to SERVE
Transformative leadership begins with transformative learning.
We can start by giving individuals, who might otherwise not have the opportunity to realize their dream of becoming certified clinicians, access to vital resources. Our goal for this community is to increase the number of physicians representing minority groups.
To facilitate this, we:
Provide scholarships for researching health equity
Help students with medical school and residency applications and fees that can make medical education financially inaccessible for many minority students
Provide coaching and preparation assistance for nontraditional students
Many of the barriers to better minority health hide in plain sight, and one of them is that we don’t have enough Black physicians or physicians of color.
Because of the increased understanding that medical students from minority groups are impacted by racism daily in their training; For the past two years, Sharp Index has awarded scholarships to students interested in understanding how racism in healthcare can impact physicians’ mental health. This year, we will expand our efforts with the Sharp Index Health Equity Scholarship. These funds are dedicated to assisting individuals, improving health equity education in medical training, and building long-term health equity foundations.
Want to Improve Health Equity? Invest in it.
Thank you to our partners:
