Each year, members of the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences compete for the highly competitive Lazarus Family Scholarship, which funds pivotal medical education experiences. The annual scholarship provides research funding for one student from each MD class at GW SMHS to hone their skills through a project of their choosing in areas such as health care delivery, advocacy for the underserved, evidence-based medicine, or international health. Applicants submit a detailed project proposal in the spring of their MSII year to the scholarship committee and are selected based on academic excellence and the strength of their proposal.
One recent Lazarus Scholar, Scarlett Bergam, a fourth-year medical student at GW SMHS, used her award to build on her global health experience. Bergam’s interest in global health was piqued long before she began her MD studies at GW. Building on her passions for global health and research from her undergraduate experience, Bergam earned a Master of Public Health in Global Health, writing her thesis on the HIV pandemic in South Africa. She later moved to Durban for a Fulbright-funded research project with the University of KwaZulu-Natal Department of Pediatric Infectious Disease and the African Health Research Institute. There, she spent nine months as a fellow on an mHealth education and social support randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of a mobile health intervention on sexual health beliefs and attitudes. Years later, she has continued to build on her global health research with collaborators in KwaZulu-Natal as a GW medical student.
During medical school at GW SMHS, Bergam has continued that impressive record of global health research. As she prepares to enter an OB/GYN residency, Bergam reflects on the opportunities that allowed her to grow as a physician-scientist while continuing to advance global health research.
Q: What inspired you to pursue global health research during your MD program at GW?
Bergam: I learned so much from my partnerships in KwaZulu-Natal, including from the patient populations that helped inform and shape our project and the dozens of staff members who help run our projects every day. I applied to and interviewed for medical school from South Africa and chose GW because of the support I knew I would receive to continue my global health work. I planned to return to South Africa, where our projects have continued to grow and evolve, during the summer after my MI year and again during my MIV year.
I absolutely made the right choice in choosing GW, where I have received the Health Services Scholarship and the Lazarus Family Scholarship, as well as yearly Office of Student Support conference funding grants. These funding opportunities have made it possible for me to grow and thrive as a student researcher throughout my four years.
Q: How has your experience been managing the project from afar?
Bergam: Continuing global health research during medical school has been a positive challenge. Luckily, my current South Africa-based projects are all being conducted by a strong local research team and led by principal investigators from both South Africa and the United States, with whom I have a long-term relationship.
My team understands that I’m a medical student, so I’m able to be as engaged as I would like to be during each stage of my training. As a first- and second-year medical student, I attended weekly team research meetings and published manuscripts using data I had helped collect during my gap year. During the summer after my first year of medical school, I returned to South Africa for two months and helped design the expanded iteration of our intervention and assisted in hiring more than a dozen new staff members to implement it. During my third year I focused on my clinical rotations while also building my research skills in systematic reviews, grant writing, and biostatistics during elective time. In my MSIV year, I spent another two months analyzing and evaluating the impact of our projects, using the Lazarus Family Scholarship to support two additional months living and working in Durban.
Throughout medical school, I have presented at more than a dozen conferences, published 14 manuscripts, and completed a certificate in biostatistics from Stanford. Going into medical school, I never expected to be able to grow my research repertoire so much during these four years. The opportunities I’ve been fortunate to receive at GW SMHS make me excited to see where residency takes me.
Q: What are the next steps for your research? Do you have plans to publish or present your findings?
Bergam: As I wrap up the last few months of medical school, I have three manuscripts currently in the review process — one on the feasibility of long-acting injectable antiretroviral therapy, one on congenital syphilitic hepatitis in newborns, and one on the qualitative impact of our adolescent HIV intervention. I also hope to present some of this work at AIDS 2026 this summer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I look forward to networking within my chosen residency field of OB/GYN this year at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ 2026 Annual Clinical & Scientific Meeting, which will be held in Washington, D.C., just before graduation.
Looking ahead, I hope to continue building skills and experiences as a physician-scientist, even throughout the four demanding years of OB/GYN residency. It won’t be an easy balance, but being a GW student has taught me that so much is possible in four short years.
For more information on the Lazarus Family Scholarship Program and other funding opportunities, please visit the Office of Student Professional Enrichment website.
If you are a GW MD student interested in an international research or clinical elective experience, please contact Rebecca Zacuto at rebecca [dot] zacuto [at] gwu [dot] edu (rebecca[dot]zacuto[at]gwu[dot]edu).