Get Involved
DO Day at the Statehouse/DO Day on the Hill
The Ohio Osteopathic Association encourages students to serve as advocates for patients and the osteopathic profession. The association helps to underwrite the cost of student participation in DO Day at the State House in Columbus and DO Day on the Hill in Washington, D.C.
Learn more about DO Day and register to attend.
Ohio Osteopathic Symposium and OOA House of Delegates
Each June, DOs from across the state gather for the Ohio Osteopathic Symposium and Ohio Osteopathic Association House of Delegates. In addition to providing continuing medical education, the OOA House of Delegates meets to elect officers, debate resolutions and serve as the policy-making body for the state's osteopathic profession. A growing number of students are also entering posters in the annual CORE/OOA Poster Contest. Finally, to facilitate student representation in professional business meetings at the state and national levels, the OOA and the Ohio ACOFP underwrites the cost of sending the OU-COM student delegate to the state and national meetings.
Read more information on this year's Annual Convention.
Mentoring Program
The OOA and AOA strongly believe that mentoring is an essential component of the learning experience for students, interns, residents and young practitioners, and it also enhances the understanding of the mentors in their exchanges with mentees in understanding the issues they face. Most importantly, mentoring is intended to provide participants in the program with the support and guidance that they seek to become physicians who are dedicated to the goals of the osteopathic medical profession. Since osteopathic medicine places its emphasis on treating patients, not symptoms, both the OOA and AOA believe the mentees in the program become physicians who are first and foremost dedicated to the importance of quality health care and the patient/physician relationship.
CLICK HERE to learn more and sign-up for the AOA Mentoring Program.
Ohio Leadership Opportunities
Ohio Osteopathic Association Board of Trustees
The OOA has a long history of supporting student involvement in the profession. In fact, the OOA was the first state osteopathic association in the nation to add a voting student representative to its Board of Trustees and to seat a student delegate in its House of Delegates. The President of OU-COM's Student Government serves as that voting member. If you have questions, concerns, or an interest in getting involved, please contact your student representative, Mark Postel, SGA President and OOA Board Member.
Ohio ACOFP Board of Governors
The President of the OU-COM Family Practice Student Association serves as a voting member of the Ohio ACOFP Board of Trustees. The State Society also provides an annual $1,500 grant to support the organization. If you have questions, concerns, or an interest in getting involved, please contact your student representative Nhu-An Nguyen, Student Family Practice Association President and Ohio ACOFP Board Member.
State Science Day
Each year, the OOA presents six Osteopathic Medical Awards in two grade categories during the Ohio Academy of Science's State Science Day. The competition attracts more than 1,000 junior and senior high school students from across Ohio. OU-COM medical students are needed to judge the 50 or so projects submitted in the OOA's category, which covers medical, health, and behavioral research. For more information
Osteopathic Health Policy Internship
The American Osteopathic Association and American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine jointly sponsor the Osteopathic Health Policy Intern (OHPI) Program each year enabling two osteopathic medical students to spend a month in each of the government relations departments of the AOA and AACOM. The program, open to all current osteopathic medical students, provides participants an understanding and operational knowledge of how federal healthcare policy is formulated and how to effectively impact the process.
CLICK HERE for more information.
SOMA Unity Project
Each year, the Student Osteopathic Medical Association (SOMA) sponsors a community service project during the winter holidays. SOMA members from across the country participate, making it a great way to help others while making new friends and seeing new places.
In December 2007, more than 100 osteopathic medical students volunteered at New York City shelters, providing informative and interactive sessions on asthma, nutrition, fitness, stress, STDs, dental hygiene, and other topics. They also performed blood pressure screenings and cooked meals for the homeless. Residents of the shelters were eager to learn more about osteopathic principles and requested that SOMA students return for more sessions in the future. This project was made possible by support from AOA members, the SOMA Foundation, and by a grant from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.
In 2006, students traveled to Kissimmee, Florida, and the Give Kids the World organization to engage in activities with children and families of those children impacted by deadly diseases. Some activities included train conducting, cookie monster cart, pizza delivery, gift giving, and much more.
The Unity project supported Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in 2005. Seventy-three participants from ten osteopathic medical schools went to Mississippi to lend a helping hand.
To learn more, click here Student Medical Osteopathic Association
Enter The AOA History Essay Competition
To encourage osteopathic medical students, interns and residents to study their profession’s past struggles and achievements, the AOA Bureau of Osteopathic History and Identity is conducting its sixth annual history essay competition. As it has done since 2006, the bureau will bestow up to three awards: a $5,000 first prize, a $3,000 second prize and a $2,000 third prize. The bureau is asking contestants to focus their essays on the bureau’s “Core Principles for Teaching the History of Osteopathic Medicine.” For the 2010 essay competition, the bureau has chosen five different core principles than those used in 2009 and those used in 2008. Because the bureau has 20 core principles, it is rotating them so that the competition focuses on different ones each year. For more information click here, http://www.do-online.org/TheDO/?p=20961
