As the practice of medicine evolves, Sara Lamb leads Utah’s effort to reimagine how we train the next generation of health care providers.

Sara Lamb wants to see a world where health care is accessible for all. It’s a lofty goal, but she is not alone in aiming to achieve it. Equitable health care requires communities to work together—each individual playing a part for the greater good. For Lamb, that comes in the form of training and educating medical students through inclusive, cutting-edge programs that prepare physicians of the future to not only provide exceptional care but serve as advocates for those facing barriers to health care along the way.

As vice dean of education in the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, Lamb collaborates with colleagues to build a program that attracts top prospective medical students from around the world. But attracting exceptional candidates starts with offering exceptional training.

“We have compassionate faculty who care about our students, who care about giving them the most exceptional learning experience of their life,” Lamb says.

Providing stellar education and training requires staying ahead of the health care landscape’s evolutionary curve. To do this, Lamb and her colleagues are committed to thinking outside of the box. In 2021, her team launched MedEdMorphosis, an ambitious movement to transform the medical student education program to extend beyond the surface of curricular changes into the community.

“MedEdMorphosis embarks on looking at: ‘what are we doing to prepare young people who are in that K through 16 timeframe to want to become physicians? How do we entice people from all areas of our state and from all walks of life to think: medicine can be a future for me,’” Lamb explains.

photo by Kim Raff

The movement will help overcome common challenges in medical education, seek ways to leverage positive changes, and innovate to maximize benefits for students and patients. While MedEdMorphosis influenced big changes in the curriculum—the new curriculum, Mission-Driven MD, launched in August of 2023—it also inspires an approach that helps students learn from and engage with people from all walks of life.

“We hope to embed our students in our communities—to make them part of community clinics and give them essential roles in the care of our patients from the very first day they start medical school,” Lamb says. “Giving students ownership over clinic operations so they really understand how health care is delivered is a critical component to helping people understand the barriers to good care—as well as how to change the system so that we can advocate with our students for better systems.”

Lamb is looking forward to what the future brings for the School of Medicine—and how the upcoming Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine building will help facilitate preparing the U’s medical students for making their mark in the field. The new building will offer simulation learning, a world-class anatomy lab, and spaces designed for students to work as a team. They will learn how to practice emergency medicine in simulated settings that represent the mountainous, desert, and rural landscapes that comprise Utah, and they will elevate bringing theory to practice by training together in ways that build comradery.

With MedEdMorphosis, change is coming. Lamb can’t wait to introduce the world to the physicians it will have inspired.

“Our students can be essential contributors to the care of patients. These are smart people, they are motivated and passionate,” she says. “We have an awesome medical school right now, and we intend to be even more exceptional, more innovative, and on the leading edge for a number of things.”

photo by David Titensor