The SOAR program is a competitive program for rising M2 students, offering an opportunity to engage in inquiry and scholarly activity with a faculty mentor.
The SOAR program is a full-time eight-week summer program that enables USC SOM medical students to work closely with faculty mentors, exploring basic science, translational, or clinical research, or projects focused on health care quality or patient safety, or educational research. Students and mentors apply for participation in the fall, followed by a selection and matching process that aims to align students' interests with mentors' expertise.
At the Prisma Health Education & Research Institute Showcase on November 7th, SOAR students Catherine Chopade and Jordyn Lombardo received the Outstanding Medical Student Research Award for their poster, “Physicians Fighting Food Insecurity,” mentored by SOMC faculty Dr. Mark Humphrey and resident Dr. Will Capell.
Their project explored how “prescribing” fresh produce to patients with chronic health conditions can improve health outcomes and strengthen community wellness.
Lombardo, who presented the team’s work, reflected,
It was eye-opening to see how something as simple as access to healthy food could impact people’s health and well-being. I learned so much about the bidirectional relationship between food insecurity and poor health outcomes, and what it takes to create programs that meet people where they are.
Projects like this one highlight how valuable strong mentorship can be to a students research experience.
Chopade said that
The Physicians Fighting Food Insecurity project has been one of the most meaningful experiences in my medical education so far. I came in with very little background in public health or preventive medicine but was immediately welcomed into a project led by clinicians who truly cared about their patients and the health disparities they face.
The team’s efforts underline the impact of evidence-based practice and community-engaged medicine in addressing one of the most pressing social determinants of health — access to nutritious food.
Classmates Briana Pope (right) and Njasi Oji (left) qualified for the semifinals in the American Medical Association Research Challenge, the largest national, multi-specialty medical research conference for medical students, residents and international medical graduates to showcase and present research. Advancing to the semifinals means their abstracts were ranked in the top 3% of all submissions.
Harshitha Visikamalla, a second-year medical student and SOAR program participant, placed second in the poster competition at the 2025 South Carolina Neurological Association Conference on September 13th for her abstract Reduced White Matter Tract Integrity is Related to Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomena.
2024 SOAR participants Emma Grice and Cecily Kaufmann won outstanding medical student poster at the Prisma Research Showcase in Greenville, S.C., in October 2024, for their project titled New Diagnosis HIV linkage to care evaluation in Southeastern United States: A retrospective cohort study. The team worked with mentor Dr. Sarah Battle.
2023 SOAR student Anna Baucom presented her study titled Immediate Postpartum LARC Devices and the Choose Well Grant: Characteristics Associated with LARC Continuation > 12 Months at the SAAOG Conference in Sea Island, Georgia in January while working with mentor, Dr. Patricia Seal.
Second Year M.D. student, Lance Schacht was recently published in the Current Infectious Disease Reports as the second author on a study looking at Intrapartum Infections in expecting mothers, while being mentored by SOMC faculty member Dr. Patricia Seal.