The Harvard Medical School Department of Population Medicine announces a call for submissions for a $1000 prize for the best paper on a topic in Population Medicine written by a Harvard Medical School or Harvard School of Dental Medicine student.  

The student who submits the most outstanding scholarly paper will be awarded the $1000 prize. Students may submit papers individually or as part of a team of up to 3 students, in which case the prize will be awarded to all coauthors and the $1000 split equally among them.  All coauthors must be current students at HMS or HSDM.  Papers may be written in response to this call, as part of a course, as part of the Scholars in Medicine program, or as independent scholarly endeavors, but may not be published or submitted for publication at the time of submission for this Prize. 

Papers will be judged on how well they establish the importance of the topic to population health and how well they summarize the evidence base for the topic.  Students are encouraged to assess the strength of evidence they cite, and suggest (not conduct) strategies to improve the strength of at least one part of the evidence. We also encourage a short discussion of what physicians and/or dentists could do about the issue.

Papers should have a maximum of 1200 words and up to 7 references.  They should be formatted according to JAMA guidelines for Viewpoint articles. 

Address questions and submit entries by February 17, 2023 to: fletcher_prize@point32health.org. More information, including past winners, can be found here.

Suzanne and Robert Fletcher met while they were students at Harvard Medical School, class of 1966. Individually and jointly they have been national leaders in advancing the field of clinical epidemiology. Their textbook, Clinical Epidemiology: The Essentials, now in its 5th edition and co-written with their son, has been translated into several languages. Among other contributions, they served as Co-Editors in Chief of the Annals of Internal Medicine and founding Co-Editors of the Journal of General Internal Medicine and were founders of the World Association of Medical Editors. In 1994, they returned to HMS and joined the Department.  Suzanne directed the Patient-Doctor II physical diagnosis course for second-year students and introduced the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) assessment to Harvard Medical School. Bob was founding director of the longitudinal Primary Care Clerkship.  Both continue as Professors emeriti in the DPM.