Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, one of four historically Black medical schools in the United States, has recently established a joint M.D./Ph.D. program with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Health Care Management Department. The initiative allows a student to simultaneously pursue a medical degree from Meharry and a Ph.D. in health care management at the Wharton School, the country’s top-ranked business school according to U.S. News.
Cynthia Chude, a third-year medical student at Meharry, has been named the inaugural Escarce-Kingston Scholar. She will take a leave of absence from her current studies to complete a five-year doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, she will serve as a research fellow with Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.
A native of Nigeria, Chude earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After graduation, she served as a research associate at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, where she studied autophagy in cancer therapy. Through her new doctoral program, she will investigate how healthcare policy affects discrimination and health disparities.
