Why did I choose osteopathic medicine? I first found out about osteopathic medicine in the mid-1980s as a high school student. Oddly enough, I had a Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine catalog in my book collection; don't ask me how I got it. I've no idea to this day, where that came from. Anyway, I remember looking through the catalog and thinking, "Wow, this Osteopathic Manipulative Therapy sounds neat!" I was a football player and suffered a whole litany of injuries year in and year out. I didn't like taking injections and I thought that it would have been neat to experience OMT as a means of dealing with my achy knees and ankles. I asked my dad about it and his response was that osteopathic medicine was nothing more than chiropractic medicine and that I shouldn't waste my time with it. That was the end of my thoughts about osteopathic medicine.
Flash forward to the spring and summer of 2020. I am staring at my computer trying to decide what medical schools to apply to. At the time, I hadn't quite turned 49 but I knew that many medical schools, while not practicing outright age discrimination, don't look terribly kindely on older applicants. I spent a LOT of time reviewing AAMC and AACOM admissions and matriculant data for the last several years. I also reviewed a lot of schools websites. What I noticed is that there were far fewer students in their late 30s to late 40s who had been admitted or were attending allopathic medical schools. This isn't to say that osteopathic medical schools are a deep and welcoming haven for older students such as myself but a review of the numbers showed me that I would have significantly better odds of getting into an osteopathic program as opposed to an allopathic program. I saw that some DO programs had acceptaed students as old as 61 and I found out that ATSU-SOMA, the school where I will be starting in the fall, had a student who was 57 years of age just a few years ago!
The next thing that I considered was how schools would view my undergraduate studies. As you've probably heard, there are things that students can do to reinvent themselves, academically. You can attend a post bac or SMP program; these programs can allow you to demonstrate that you have the ability to succeed in hard sciences and to a degree, they can help you to make up for a lower undergraduate GPA. While I did have a 3.67 in my pharmacology & toxicology masters and a 3.778 from one semester spent as a non-degree seeking student in an SMP program (21 credits), the reality as I have found out is that some schools will still place a great deal of emphasis on your undergraduate work. I started calling several allopathic programs, most notably Howard University, Meharry, and Morehouse School of Medicine, to find out how I might be percieved as a candidate. I will just say that with the exception of my home state allopathic program and one out of state program, U of Arizona and the U of Iowa, no allopathic program seemed to view me as a viable candidate. The admissions counselor that I spoke with at Howard was particularly pointed when she said that I would be wasting my money by applying to Howard. My experience was different with the D.O. programs that I was able to make contact with. I remember in particular a visit that my wife and I made to Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine. I was able to sit with the guy who was the director of admissions at the time and he reviewed my transcripts. As opposed to dismissing me outright, he made a few suggestions on how I could word things in my application to explain my academic performance as well as discuss what was going on in my life that led to some of those grades. I also had similar experiences with ATSU-SOMA and West Virgina University College of Osteopathic Medicine. Overall, it just felt like I wouldn't have to continue to pay for the poor grades that I made as a 17 year old freshman student at Texas Southern University in 1989 and later, as a newly returned undergraduate student at Arizona State University in the spring of 2004.
In 2012, I ruptured my left Achilles tendon and after the surgical repair, I needed to seek rehabilitation. A colleague suggested that I see a sports medicine physician in Chandler, AZ who also happened to be a D.O. Through the use of a combination of OMT and traditional physical therapy, I was able to resume jogging 3 to 4 months ahead of the original schedule that my surgeon had laid out for me. Since that time, I've seen two D.O.'s as PCP's and I've noticed a few differences between them and the M.D.'s that I've seen. For starters, I feel like the two osteopathic physicians that I have seen have been more thorough with my H&Ps. For example, each time that I saw them, there was a discussion about my selcual health and whether or not I needed PrEP. Prior to that, I have NEVER had a doctor ask about my sexual health; now that I am married, many doctors just assume that I and my wife don't need to have a sexual health assessment. I believe that EVERY patient should have their sexual health assessed no matter their marital status and if you have a single, sexually active patient, they should be assessed for PrEP needs. The two D.O.'s that I saw took more time with me; when I was a new patient, I particularly remember my first D.O. giving me 45 minutes of time. Every visit thereafter, he would spend 15-20 minutes going over my chart and talking to me about my health. My mother-in-law was also seeing a D.O. at Western University-COMPs Patient Care Center around this same time and her experience was similar to mine. There was a large focus on getting to know her and he spent a lot of time carefully explaining things to her, answering her questions, and making sure that she was OK with treatment plans. In short, he made sure that she felt like she was the driver of her care. I don't mean to suggest that there are not M.D.'s who don't take this sort of care and time with their patients, I know that there are. My dad's PCP is a wonderful doctor who practices integrative medicine. Its just that in my experience with M.D.'s, this isn't something that I'd experienced.
One of my undergraduate degrees is in community health promotion and sociology and my second masters is in public health. My PhD is going to be in Nursing & Healthcare Innovation; my specializations are community based participatory research and clinical & translational research. I've got years of experience teaching and working in public health industry. When I decided that I wanted to attend medical school, I said that I wanted to be able to blend what I know in public health with the practice of medicine. In my research about osteopathic medicine, I discovered that social justice and public health is built into its DNA. For example, A.T. Still, the founder of the osteopathic profession, was a very early abolitionist; like his father, he did not believe in slavery and he followed his convictions by fighting against slavery; he served in the 9th Kansas Cavalry (US) on the side of the Union during the Civil War.
Other osteopathic physicians have also loomed large in the fight for social justice. For example, Dr. William G. Anderson worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. David Abernathy to help African Americans gain voting rights in Georgia. Dr. Anderson was later the first African American President of the American Osteopathic Association (AOA). Dr. Ashley Denmark has taken on the task of normalizing academic success in minority youth. Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee, the sister of Diana Ross, broke a major barrier by becoming the FIRST African American woman to be a Dean of a U.S. medical school and the first osteopathic physician to earn the title "Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow." In 2017, she retired as the Vice President of for Health Sciences and Medical Affairs at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine. I could go on and on but you get the point. There have been a great number of African American D.O.'s, both past and present, who have taken a leading role in breaking down barriers and fighting for social justice.
Dr. Still also believed in early ideas surrounding the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and public health. Tragically, Dr. Still lost several children due to infectious disease. He did not trust the commonly used medicines and treatments of the day and this is how he came to develop his concepts of osteopathy. However, in reading some of his history, it became clear to me that Dr. Still also understood that the conditions that we are born, live, and die in have an influence on our health as well. He understood how diet could influence health. I believe that some of his writings suggest an understanding of the role of stress and bad health. While many of his ideas about medicine have not withstood the test of evidence based medicine and time, his ideas about the SDOH (even though they were not called that at the time) and how they influence health have not only withstood the test of time, they are gaining renewed interest as we look for ways to modify health and disease that do not require medical intervention. So I view osteopathic medicine to be a very good fit for my background and training in public health as well as my interests in social justice, particularly in the realm of increasing Black male representation in medicine and the Black Lives Matter movement. In short, osteopathic medicine is a natural fit for me.
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