The Case for an Updated Premedical Curriculum in the United States

In today's world of stark inequalities, medical education is increasingly recognizing the importance of exposing future physicians to topics such as health equity, social justice, public health, and human rights. A human rights-based approach (HRBA) to medical education centers these concepts as the foundation of equitable and accessible health care systems, comprising professionals who are literate in the social determinants of health and work to combat underlying inequalities. While medical schools and residency programs have preliminarily embraced this approach, the premedical curriculum has remained effectively stagnant since the early 20th century, adopting a narrow focus on the basic sciences and competitive individualism. In this essay, I argue that the premedical years represent a crucial, yet thus far overlooked, time frame in which to cultivate the values, qualities, and career expectations required of physicians under an HRBA to medical education, and critique how the current system generally fails to accomplish this. As a potential solution to realign the premedical curriculum with an HRBA and promote greater synergy within the medical education pipeline, I promote the introduction of premedical service-learning courses, which combine formal instruction in social justice, public health, and human rights with student-led community service projects.