Berks County Medical Society Medical Record Fall 2019 - 44

m E d i C a l r E C o r d F E at u r E

BCMS Summer Interns:
Where Are They Now?
With the publication of Spencer Barbera's article in this edition
of the Medical Record, the BCMS can count six successful years of
a summer internship for college students interested in medicine
or other health care professions. Our purpose in establishing
this program was to support the aspirations of bright, ambitious
young people from our community who plan to use their talents to
advance health care. Each student's core assignment is to produce a
research paper on a topic of importance to the medical community,
with a particular focus on its relevance to the Berks County area.
To this end, BCMS members with expertise on the chosen topic act
as mentors and the student is also connected to other community
members willing to share pertinent knowledge and experience. In
this way, the student's 'book' research is supplemented and informed
by exposure to the perspectives of local professionals who are dealing
with the issue here and now.
Thanks to the cooperation of the Reading Hospital's Academic
Affairs Department, our student intern is considered a participant
in that department's Student Summer Internship program, so we
run our 6-week internship concurrent with this program and we
match their stipend. This facilitates our intern's ability to spend
time shadowing physicians at the hospital, and our intern is able to
participate in the didactic sessions offered as part of the hospital's
program. Additional clinical shadowing experiences are arranged
with physicians in the community according to each student's
interest. We owe a debt of thanks to all the physicians who so
generously open their doors to our interns.
The $2000 stipend that our interns receive is supported by
the BCMS Educational Trust, which received a most generous
gift recently from Dr. Pat Sharma. In recognition of this gift,
our student internship is now named the Pat Sharma President's
Scholarship. Dr. Sharma has had a long career as a Vascular Surgeon
with Penn State St. Joseph Medical Center. He made his gift as a
mark of the importance he has always placed on the education of
upcoming physicians. Education is one of the four points of the
compass that is the emblem of the Berks County Medical Society,
indicating that education is one of our core missions. In addition to
the student internship, our educational initiatives include our call-in
radio show, Health Talk, on WEEU, our annual research poster
contest (with cash prizes) for local resident physicians, Residents'
Day and Memorial Lecture, and occasional CME offerings.
Recently I reached out to our past student interns to ask for a
brief update on their careers and for a few words about how they
benefited from our program. Their answers follow.
To ensure the future of these educational programs, additional
charitable donations to the Educational Trust are needed. Please
consider joining Dr. Sharma and the other donors who have given
our trust a good start on the road to sustainability. For information
on making a donation, call or email our Executive Director, T.J.
Huckleberry, at (610) 375-6555 or tjhuckleberry@berkscms.org.
Thank you.
Lucy J. Cairns, Editor

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www.berkscms.org

Michael T. Brown (2014)

Ready or Not: "Meaningful Use" of Health IT
As the inaugural intern at the Berks County Medical Society in
2014, Michael T. Brown took a specific interest at how new CMS
Meaningful Use requirements spurred adoption of Electronic Health
Records. Five years later, he remains committed to making a more
efficient and connected healthcare system.
Since that summer, Michael finished his graduate studies at the
University of Johns Hopkins Carey Business School receiving a Masters
in Business Administration. While in Business School, he worked at
Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures to assess the potential for patenting
and commercializing digital health technologies. He gravitated toward
this concept, as he looked for a career that would allow him to continue
to bring innovative and impactful products to the healthcare market.
Today Michael works for CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, the Blue
Plan of Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia covering 3.3 million
Americans. Within CareFirst he works for the corporate development,
corporate venture, and commercialization team called Healthworx.
The team is responsible for sourcing and partnering with innovative
companies solving challenging problems in healthcare. Currently
the team is focused on novel solutions in several categories including;
lowering pharmaceutical spending, increasing access to behavioral
health services, providing the patient with a better experience for
navigating the healthcare ecosystem, and finding solutions that will help
CareFirst manage populations in Medicaid and Medicare Advantage.
If you are working with a company in this space interested in a
payer partnership, please connect on Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.
com/in/michaeltbrownjr/

Sara Braun Radaoui (2015)

Access to Mental Health Care in Berks County
I am most grateful to the Berks County Medical Society for the
Summer Internship opportunity. This invaluable experience allowed
me to interact with and learn from great leaders in our local medical
community. My summer research article, "Access to Mental Healthcare
in Berks County," was published in the 2015 Fall Edition of the Medical
Record. It was during this process that I discovered my true passion for
writing. Shortly after, I landed my first exciting job opportunity fresh
out of college.

Emily Evans (2016)

Opiates or Medical Marijuana for the Treatment of
Chronic Pain?
My time spent with the Berks County Medical Society was crucial
in supporting my journey to applying to medical school. The variety
of exposure I received to the medical field, shadowing a myriad of
specialists and a medical lobbyist, showed me the incredible diversity
of opportunities that medicine has to offer. My time spent working on
a literature review article taught me how to navigate scientific research
and to speak with clarity on controversial topics, i.e. opioid addiction
and medical marijuana. Since my summer with BCMS, I have done
oncology lab research with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals. I then
graduated from Gettysburg College in 2018 with a Biology degree and
Chemistry minor with the goal of pursuing acceptance into medical
school during my gap year. Since graduation, I have been working as
a Medical Scribe at a Pain Management Practice, and volunteering at
a Free Clinic as a Lab Assistant/Phlebotomist. I am currently applying
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltbrownjr/ http://www.berkscms.org
Berks County Medical Society Medical Record Fall 2019

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