A Fitting Start to a Medical Career: A New White Coat
The longest journey begins with a single step, but for first-year students at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, their path toward becoming physicians began with the single, symbolic act of donning a white coat. A simple bit of attire that means so much.

The 102 members of SMD’s Class of 2028 celebrated the start of their medical careers at the 19th annual Robert L. & Lillian H. Brent White Coat Ceremony on Aug. 16. They gathered with faculty, family, and friends at the Larry and Cindy Bloch Alumni and Advancement Center to hear from faculty and fellow students about the challenges and rewards of their chosen career – and to bond as a group of colleagues who will learn from and support each other over the next four years.

Wilmot Science Training Program for Deaf High Schools Students Expands Across the U.S.
Wilmot’s Future Deaf Scientists program started as a partnership with the Rochester School for the Deaf (RSD). Each summer, a group of RSD high school students intern at the cancer center to learn about various aspects of oncology and cancer research. Through shadowing and classroom instruction, they experience a day in the life of oncologists, surgeons, nursing staff, and cancer researchers. Students also get the chance to meet prominent Deaf medical professionals and researchers both locally and from around the country in virtual fireside chats.

FDA Taps URMC to Develop New Digital Measures for Huntington's Disease
The new research is being funded by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), under the Digital Health Technologies for Drug Development program. The FDA has tasked URMC and collaborators with demonstrating the reliability, validity, and meaningfulness of two key digital measures: daily living mobility (gait) and chorea, the involuntary muscle movements that are a hallmark symptom of the disease. Data will be captured remotely and continuously using wrist and trunk-worn digital sensors in individuals with early-stage Huntington's disease and controls. The study also includes qualitative work using an innovative symptom mapping approach to ensure meaningfulness of the measures to people with Huntington’s disease.

What The Streets Teach
Classes teach medicine, but Street Outreach helps teach how to connect with patients in ways that most students would never expect. It asks student volunteers to have hope for people who have sometimes lost all hope themselves, mirroring how society tends to view them. At times, these volunteers are trying to support people who have nobody else left who believes in them.

If the future of medicine depends on more equitable health care, participants in this program would say that learning on the streets of Rochester is helping to prepare them for that future.

Class of 2028 Code of Conduct
Every year, our incoming class creates a Code of Conduct which is a reminder to our students why they have chosen medicine.