Admin_Adham
When Austin Flitton was applying to medical school, he realized he wanted to have a broader impact on societal challenges, such as reducing the barriers to healthcare services that immigrants face.
“I speak Spanish and talked to a lot of immigrants that come over from Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, and they lack access to basic needs that I think we have access to as citizens and people that are assimilated to this culture,” Flitton said. “I felt like, as part of my medical school curriculum, I wanted to have [skills] that would help me to understand and address those larger issues.”
In his second year of medical school at The University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center at San Antonio, Flitton is pursuing an MD-MPH degree. He believes the dual graduate degree in medicine and public health will allow him to bring about public policy changes to improve healthcare beyond what he’d be able to do as a physician seeing patients.
Flitton is among a growing number of students pursuing graduate degrees in medical-related fields along with their MDs.
About Medscape Data
Medscape continually surveys physicians and other medical professionals about key practice challenges and current issues, creating high-impact analyses. For example, the Medscape Medical Students Rate Clinical Instruction Report 2025 found that:
- Third- and fourth-year med students highly rated their clinical instruction.
- 59% of med students surveyed said the emphasis on clinical decision-making was excellent or good.
- 70% of med student respondents said attendings and residents were excellent or good at answering questions and providing feedback.
About 9% of medical students pursue dual degrees, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) 2024-25 medical school enrollment data released earlier this year. The most common dual degrees were MD-PhD, followed by MD-MPH. This was the first year AAMC published enrollment data on dual degrees beyond MD-PhD programs, which increased by about 18% in the past 10 years.
Meanwhile, medical schools report their own increases in dual enrollment, mostly among MD-master’s degree programs, and have been adding dual degree programs to keep up with the growing demand. The vast majority of US medical schools (91%) have MD-master’s degree graduates, according to a study published last year in BMC Medical Education. However, most schools (66%) graduate only a few students at a time.
The study focused on 19 allopathic medical schools that graduated an average of 10 or more MD-master’s degree students each year from 2015 to 2020. Participants said their dual-degree programs offered opportunities for students to expand skills, career interests, and goals; develop additional areas of expertise beyond a medical degree; enhance competitiveness for residency applications; and create an environment for interdisciplinary collaboration.
Lead study author Gauri Agarwal, MD, said the research showed a clear trend of medical schools nationwide offering a second graduate-level degree in addition to a medical degree. She also noted that more students are seeking dual degree programs that they can complete simultaneously, such as those offered at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, where Agarwal is an associate dean for curriculum.
“We’ve been able to deliver some of these combined programs within 4 years so that you can get your medical degree as well as, let’s say, a master’s degree…” Within the time students spend getting their medical degrees, they’re able to add a master’s and do it for less tuition than if they were to get them separately.
Two Degrees for One
In some schools, credits from one degree can be used to fulfill the requirements for the second degree.
Agarwal explained that each school may offer overlapping courses. For example, a school’s MBA program may offer a business health elective that also counts toward a medical degree, she said.
Last year, the Miller School of Medicine graduated its first class from a new 4-year MD-MBA dual degree program.
The school had the highest volume of MD-dual degree graduates in the study Agarwal led. Nearly 50 of its 200 MD graduates, or one quarter, received dual MD-MPH degrees, and the school had the largest 4-year MD-MBA program, which has tripled in the past 3-4 years. “We have close to 60%-70% of our class graduating every year with a second degree,” Agarwal said.
“I think students recognize that the US healthcare system is so complex and that having perhaps a public health mindset, leadership training, or business skills will naturally help them.”
The schools, in turn, realize that they need to provide a way for students to combine their medical training with other disciplines to solve healthcare challenges, Agarwal added.
“We’re not just trying to produce doctors. We’re trying to produce doctors who can be transformational leaders in healthcare.”
At the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, the MD-MPH program has tripled in the last 7 years, according to Ron Ben-Ari, MD, senior associate dean of medical education. Nearly 15% of the class recently participated in the MD-MPH program, he estimated.
Ben-Ari said he believes many of the med students in the program are interested in primary care and “impacting the health of communities, and so they view the MPH as providing them a skill set and credibility to achieve that.”
Students pursuing the MPH program apply in their third year of medical school after completing their core clerkships. They take a leave of absence from med school to complete the 1-year MPH program before returning to med school for their final year.
In the past 3 years, UT Health San Antonio started two new MD-master’s degree programs, including an MD-MBA program and what’s believed to be the first in the country combining medicine with artificial intelligence, according to Stephanie Gutierrez, MEd, director of dual degree programs at UT Health San Antonio’s Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine.
The school also has the MD-MPH program in which Flitton is enrolled, which began in 2007. The three dual-degree programs have a total enrollment of about 60 students with 10-20 graduates a year, Gutierrez added. “So, it’s not just the growth of the number of students but also the growth of programs offered for our institution.”
She explained that two of the three programs allow students to use some of the credits from their medical degree to complete their master’s degree, which saves them time and money.
While two of the programs take 5 years to complete, MD-MPH students can finish both degrees in 4 years. “It makes it easier to navigate not taking a year off, but also helps with the financial burden,” she said.
Dual Degrees and The Match
A 2020 study comparing applicants with traditional medical degrees to those with dual degrees didn’t find much difference in match rates. “Despite the growing popularity of combined MD programs, the programs do not appear to increase applicant match competitivity.”
However, Agarwal noted that upon closer analysis, the study only records the percentage of students who found a position. It doesn’t account for which field applicants match into. MD-MBA students, for example, tend to gravitate toward highly competitive fields, “which means the degree is conferring an advantage.”
She contends that dual degrees enhance students’ applications to residency training programs and help them during interviews with program directors. “As an example, MBA training might help them with administrative roles. It could be that the MPH will allow them to be in public health roles in the future, so those types of short-term and long-term career interests, I think, are hugely beneficial for our students.”
Ben-Ari said students are obviously setting their sights on residency as their next step after medical school. “I think from the standpoint of positioning them for residency, there’s a perception that it improves their application because it shows that they are a driven, successful student when they get a dual degree.”
Another reason Ben-Ari believes students may choose dual enrollment during medical school is to take advantage of the educational infrastructure while they are already immersed in that environment. “If you already know you have an interest in one of the dual-degree programs, the timing is such in medical school that you are enabled to do it,” he said. “You’d have to figure out how to do it later in your career if you wait.”
Flitton spoke with physicians involved in public health initiatives who didn’t get a public health degree and had to teach themselves some of the skills he’s learning. “I think if I hadn’t been taking these courses or even just having this mindset, my experience would be a lot different.”
He said he’s confident his dual degrees will make him competitive in the match, but not because he has an extra degree. “It will bring a unique perspective of wanting to better the community that I’m going to be in as a resident.”
“I definitely was thinking more long-term, like who do I want to be as a physician. What are some bucket list items I want to accomplish in my career, and thinking about being involved in academia, in policy, in the community, and maybe even at the state level was more motivating to me than just being a doctor, and those goals aligned with what the MPH program does.”
Gutierrez said that while some students may be adding an additional degree to improve their residency applications, medical schools want to ensure they are choosing dual programs for the right reasons. They are selective in recruiting students for the program, meaningfully talking with them about their reason for a dual degree and their future goals.
Impact on Career Advancement
To learn how their dual degree programs impact graduates, the Miller School of Medicine surveyed former MD-MPH students about how they incorporate public health training into their careers.
The results of the survey, published in 2023, found that early-career graduates reap benefits in their public health work, such as leadership roles. Agarwal said. “Close to 50% of them had been chosen to be chief residents in their programs, which is a great honor.
Medical schools are expected to continue sharing the successes and challenges of their dual enrollment programs through the Medical Education Dual Degree Consortium that began in 2023. The goal is to create a database of similar programs, according to Gutierrez, the founding chair.
While it’s still early in his medical training, Flitton believes he will benefit from his dual degrees, providing a larger perspective on public health and medicine than the traditional MD path.
Roni Robbins is a freelance journalist and former editor for Medscape Business of Medicine. She’s also a freelance health reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her writing has appeared in WebMD, HuffPost, Forbes, New York Daily News, BioPharma Dive, MNN, Adweek, Healthline, and others. She’s also the author of the multi-award-winning novel Hands of Gold: One Man’s Quest to Find the Silver Lining in Misfortune.
