The goal of the Underserved Pathway is to prepare future healthcare providers to work with a variety of underserved populations by providing a foundation in the form of a knowledge base and real-world experiences.

Read the 2009 UP Annual Report

The underserved include individuals and communities that experience barriers in accessing quality healthcare because of contextual factors such as ethnicity, gender, disability, socioeconomic status, and life circumstances.

We encourage students to focus their pathway experiences on a specific population or community they are interested in such as homeless, incarcerated, migrant workers, immigrant populations, African Americans, Asian Americans, etc. Or, students may decide to focus their pathway experience on general underserved care and/or health policy and advocacy.

The Underserved Pathway works closely with the other School of Medicine Pathways: The Indian Health Pathway, the Global Health Pathway, and the Hispanic Health Pathway.

Pathway Benefits

1. Focused experience working with underserved and vulnerable populations.
2. Guidance and support from an Underserved Pathway mentor and UP faculty and staff.
3. Unique web-based curriculum and knowledge base about the ethics, research and policies that affect the underserved populations you plan to work with.
4. Opportunities to collaborate with other students interested in underserved issues.
5. Certificate of Completion upon graduation and successful completion of Pathway requirements.
6. Recognition in Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE/Dean's Letter)