Taylor Kennedy

Students in the Wyoming-WWAMI Medical Education Program recently presented their research projects through poster displays and viewings by academic judges and the public during the University of Wyoming College of Health Sciences’ third annual research symposium. That included four students from the Big Horn Basin.

All medical students in the WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) program are required to complete research while in the program. Most students participate in research projects during the summer between their first and second years of medical school. Students are required to present their summer projects in the form of poster presentations.

The Nov. 8 event was hosted by Ivinson Memorial Hospital and held in the hospital’s atrium.

Eleven students took part in the Rural/Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP) this past summer in which, during a four-week rotation, each student works side by side with a primary care physician in a rural or urban underserved community. While at their RUOP sites, students also are expected to complete an abbreviated community health assessment to identify both community assets and public health issues.

Taylor Kennedy completed her RUOP project in her hometown of Cody with Dr. Adam Peters, a family medicine physician who practices at Billings Clinic.

“I researched community-based interventions to improve sun-safe behaviors and increase skin cancer awareness in an effort to decrease the incidence of skin cancer in Cody,” she said. “I chose this topic because Cody has a higher incidence of skin cancer than both Wyoming and the U.S. averages.”

She said participating in the Rural/Underserved Opportunities Program has been the most rewarding experience she has had in medical school so far.

Blake Hopkin of Powell’s project is titled, “Improving Cancer Screening Education and Rates in Conrad, Montana, through Social Media.”

Austin Ellis of Byron worked with the VA Center for Limb Loss and Mobility in Seattle on the project, “Shear Wave Elastography in Tissue-Mimicking Phantoms.”

Cody Abbott of Thermopolis focused on the project, “Isolation: Antagonist and Antidote in Rural Wyoming” in Thermopolis.

Seven students also took part in an area of research called Scholarship of Discovery (SoD). This empirical research examines new discoveries made through original investigation.