Dell Medical School launched the first U.S. community of STARS with funding from the ABIM Foundation and the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation

GREENVILLE, S.C. (December 4, 2017)—M1s Bree Baginski and Connor Brunson from the USC School of Medicine Greenville joined 48 other medical students from across the country to learn about value in medicine through the new STARS (Student and Trainees Advocating for Resource Stewardship) program this past weekend. 

Brunson and Bagsinki were selected through a competitive application process for their commitment to transforming health care and to population health. 

Lauren Demosthenes, M.D., is currently the medical director of High Value Care and Innovation in the Department of OB/GYN at Greenville Health System, and the co-director of the High Value Care, Performance Improvement, and Population Health Distinction Track at the USC School of Medicine Greenville. 

"The STARS program was a perfect fit for the concepts that I'm striving to share both with my students and within my department," Demosthenes said.  

Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin is leading the initiative to identify and coach 50 student leaders in the core tenets of value-based care to create better health outcomes for patients at lower costs.

“Medical training environments have life-long effects on physicians’ medical practices, so if we want to reorient the system toward value, we should start as far upstream as we can in medical training,” said Chris Moriates, M.D., assistant dean for healthcare value at the Dell Medical School, where he is creating an innovative curriculum for value-based healthcare for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education. “By engaging medical students in introducing the concepts of Choosing Wisely into their own training, we expect to have ripple effects that will eventually reach all corners of our health care system.”

The Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation and ABIM Foundation provided funding for STARS, which kicked off this past weekend with a one-day summit at the Dell Medical School for first-year medical students.

Through the STARS program, students will review ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely value-based care campaign, along with medical society recommendations. They will use these and other tools, including the Teaching Value in Health Care learning network, to drive change at their medical schools and to improve the value of patient care they provide through their training.

The U.S. STARS program mirrors the successful STARS program started in 2015 by Choosing Wisely Canada with support from the ABIM Foundation. Over the first year of the program, Canadian medical students led several projects to advance Choosing Wisely. STARS is becoming an international movement, with the Netherlands and Japan recently launching their own programs.