Morris Taylor '20 heads to Penn State medical school
In his first year of medical school at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, biomedical engineering major Morris Taylor ’20 knew his way around. He’d been here before.
He spent a week on the campus through the Primary Care Scholars Program, thanks to his alma mater, in 2019.
“[Coordinator of Pre-health Professions Advising] Martha Smith actually connected me initially to the program when I began expressing an interest in attending medical school and working in primary care,” said Taylor. “I got to be really immersed in what Penn State Hershey had to offer and was really impressed. They have an affiliate hospital on site, which provides tremendous opportunities that don’t exist everywhere.”
Not only did he get accepted into the medical school, he was invited to join their accelerated program in family medicine.
This provided me with scholarships, saved a year of school and granted me conditional acceptance into the residency program upon graduation,” he said. “I couldn’t be more grateful God ultimately led me here.
Several things sparked his interest in medicine along the way: his work in the classroom and the Collaboratory; the shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs) in western New York where he lived; and his reflections on the healthcare realities for people in Ghana, where he spent a significant portion of his childhood. All of those thoughts and actions converged at the right time during his junior year at Messiah, so that’s when he decided to take the necessary classes in prepartion for that next step to medical school.
“There PCP shortage is staggering, leading to negative implications in acute and chronic health outcomes,” he said. “Also, in Ghana, where I was born and have spent the past several summers traveling with high school students to work in local orphanages, I noticed the absence of primary care at all.”
As a student at Messiah, he worked on the Diagnostics for Viral Diseases research project through the Collaboratory. Through the project, students designed a point-of-care HIV diagnostic device for the Macha Mission Hospital in Zambia.
“I was immersed in the Macha community and witnessed their health needs within the impoverished clinical and economic context,” he said. “Knowing my own heritage and seeing myself and my story in the lives of the underserved has placed a burden on my heart to make a difference among such populations.”
His academic advisor Emily Farrar said she is thankful to Messiah for helping her cross paths with Taylor in such a meaningful way.
“Morris is truly representative of the best of Messiah,” she said.
Taylor says his goal is to work in global healthcare, influencing medical device design for underserved and rural populations.
“I am not sure what that will look like after six more years of training,” he said, “but I anticipate that some of my work will lead me to Ghana.”
— Molly McKim ’23