Deeper Pathways for Recruitment Efforts: Identifying Opportunities for Undergraduate and Medical Student Involvement in Infectious Diseases

BACKGROUND: Only 74% of infectious diseases (ID) training positions were filled in the 2022 fellowship match, indicating a need to find increasingly novel and creative solutions for ID recruitment and outreach. METHODS: The websites of 2321 universities and 181 medical schools across the United States were manually searched for the presence of undergraduate clubs and interest groups, respectively, for multiple medical specialties and subspecialties, including ID. Geographic data were used to compare the proximity of ID fellowships to undergraduate institutions. RESULTS: ID student groups were extremely rare among the categories studied throughout undergraduate institutions (6 out of 2048, or 0.29%). Only 58 of 163 (35.6%) medical schools nationwide included an ID student group. Geographic comparison found that every adult ID fellowship is in the same county and/or city as at least 1 undergraduate institution and 28.5% of adult ID fellowships are in the same zip code as at least 1 undergraduate institution. CONCLUSIONS: The relative paucity of ID student interest groups presents an opportunity for the ID community to begin outreach and recruitment at the undergraduate and medical student levels, specifically through student groups.