May 2025: Intro to HSAFP Research Journal Club

We know May is a busy time for you all! However, for our last month of new curriculum until September, we wanted to give HSAFP members a preview of our new online alternative to begin learning crucial research skills: our HSAFP Research Journal Club.

In addition to the new curriculum that you will complete with your chapter each month, the HSAFP Executive Team will release a monthly Research Journal Club course that includes a medical research article for you to read, questions and activities to do with your chapter, other HSAFP peers, and on your own, and a video reflection on the article from a medical professional.

For this month: Dr. Ken Tao joins us in reading and discussing “Telehealth virtual reality intervention reduces chronic pain in a randomized crossover study,” a peer-reviewed journal article by Colloca et al., published in April 2025.

In his video, Dr. Tao, who earned a PhD in Neuroscience at Harvard University and has numerous published studies (for example, see Tao et al., 2021), shares his knowledge and asks us to reflect on patient access and how virtual reality might be used in medicine. Within this course, Dr. Tao also explains why our Research Journal Club will be useful for you as a future physician.

Coming next academic year:
HSAFP Monthly Research Journal Club

This year, the HSAFP Executive Team has had a handful of HSAFP members ask about research opportunities and for more curriculum each month. With our new HSAFP Monthly Research Journal Club, we’re going to give you both!

Why participate? Depending on a number of factors, it may be difficult for you as a high school student, and even an undergraduate student, to find research opportunities now and in the future (see our January 2025 Research Course and Kozlov and Ryan, 2025).

Consistently participating in our Research Journal Club will help sharpen key research skills that you will need as a future college student and medical school applicant, including your knowledge of living systems and human behavior, critical thinking, teamwork, and written communication skills.

The HSAFP Research Journal Club will officially begin in September 2025. We can’t wait to see your chapters working on these skills!