Medical students rise to the COVID-19 vaccine challenge

Abstract Background The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted medical student education at a time when they were most eager to step up and help with the pandemic response. Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) leveraged an existing relationship with the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH) and the major healthcare systems in the state to assist with the state’s mass vaccination campaign. In this paper, we describe the development and implementation of a medical student volunteer program and highlight the main components of integrating community service programs into medical education. Methods IUSM appointed a taskforce to create a state-wide IUSM Medical Student Volunteer Vaccinator program to quickly train and deploy a medical student volunteer workforce. This taskforce was charged with (1) creating and delivering asynchronous and in-person training curriculum for all nine regional campuses and (2) coordinating medical student volunteerism for vaccine delivery across the state of Indiana. Results A total of 517 of 739 targeted medical students were fully trained in vaccine administration and contributed to over 2,000 hours of volunteer community service and delivered over 15,000 vaccine doses across the state of Indiana. Students also participated in other essential vaccination delivery roles, such as screening and registration of patients, exit monitoring, and pre-calling patients to remind them of their appointments. Conclusions Community service should be a critical component of medical student education. The IUSM Medical Student Volunteer Vaccinator program is an example of what the collaboration between medical schools, state health departments, and healthcare systems can achieve. This model can not only be disseminated to other medical school / healthcare system dyads for mass vaccination efforts but can also be expanded to other public health initiatives such as health screening programs, health education programs, contact tracing programs, community outreach programs, and global health initiatives. Conflicts of interest: None