a med student's entry to policy work

going from an informed constituent to an active voice

In medicine, there is, rightfully so in my opinion, a strict hierarchy relative to training and, likely, knowledge. This set up has made me think that other industries would be similar; however, I have not found that to always be the case. Because of this precedent in medicine, I was previously worried about not having enough knowledge/wisdom/profound musings worthy to contribute to other adjacent fields I was interested in — ie. health policy work.

While I have been interested and involved in research, in varying capacities, for the greater part of the past decade, over time, I saw my focus shift toward public health (putting my grad degree to good use hopefully!). With this, came clear policy connections. But having only been exposed to medicine professionally, I was very used to research staying within academic communities — being propagated at conferences and gate-kept in journals. I had ideas! And I wanted to share those ideas! And learn from people about how to make these ideas better and have actual tangible impact, rather than take up another line on my google scholar page. While I very much care about academic rigor and maintaining that standard in my research endeavors, I found myself wanting to do more with it as well.

I got lucky being interested in urology. This specialty lends itself fairly easily to advocacy work, spanning fertility, cancers, postpartum incontinence care, sexual function, etc. As a relatively stigmatized specialty, there were a lot of voices in the field working to change that. By presenting research on the topics, I was able to (slowly start to) mingle with attendings who were actually in the spaces that I wanted to be in. This led to more research opportunities and more conversations shared. I certainly stumbled through translating clinical experiences into meaningful anecdotes, but I think that was more of a reflection on my personality rather than the environment. What started off as very technical became very natural over time.

For me, that question started with male infertility — specifically, why couples were spending months working up the female partner before anyone evaluated the male side. It seemed like an obvious inefficiency, and I wanted to understand whether it was clinical, systemic, or both. Following that question led to data, and the data led to policy. I found myself at the AUA Advocacy Summit on Capitol Hill, sitting across from congressional staffers, talking about a bill I had been following since it was first introduced. I felt out of place being there, but soon realized that that was self-imposed.

What surprised me most was that the policy world was not waiting for people with the right credentials to show up. It was waiting for people with something specific to say. The people who had the most impact were the ones who could connect a finding to a real consequence and explain it to someone who had never read a methods section. That turned out to be a learnable skill. It also turned out to be exactly what a decade of trying to make research matter beyond the journal page had been preparing me for.

I’m far from a policy expert (I try my best to stay heavily informed during school and work and life), but have curiosities and am willing to show up. Medical students often cite wanting to “help people” as a primary reason for pursuing medicine. Clinical medicine certainly helps people; advocacy is another great arena that we can and should be in if we want. The first step is just following a question and seeing where it lands you.