Two Students Win Mass. Medical Society Essay Contest

Two students from the Boston University School of Medicine have won the Massachusetts Medical Society’s 2016 Annual Medical Student History Essay Contest for their paper A Brief Era of Rational Therapeutics: The Trials and Regulations of Chester S. Keefer, MD.

Gianpaolo Carpinito and Danielle Eble, both medical degree candidates for the class of 2019, will split a $1,000 award for the winning essay.

Their collaboration focuses on the efforts of Massachusetts physician Chester S. Keefer during World War II, who orchestrated a national program that effectively guaranteed the rational prescription of penicillin. The essay reflects a historical perspective on a critical theme in medicine that remains current today: the overuse of antibiotics leading to drug-resistant strains of disease.

Eble is a magna cum laude graduate of Boston University’s Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, with a bachelor of science in human physiology.  At Boston University, she was inducted into the Scarlet Key Honor Society and awarded the Dean Elsbeth Melville Scholarship. She was also a member of the Sargent College Honor Society and one of two graduating seniors inducted into Sargent’s Twiness Honor Society.  At BUSM, she is involved in traumatic brain injury research and serves as a co-leader of the Association of Women Surgeons, the American Medical Women’s Association, and the Historical Society.

Carpinito is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor of arts in English. Inducted into the honor society Phi Beta Kappa as a junior, he also was a Benjamin Franklin scholar at UPenn.  At BUSM, he is a member of student government, elected as the Dean’s Executive, and serves as a co-leader of the Historical Society.

The essay contest is sponsored by the Medical Society’s Committee on History and invites essays related to the history of medicine or public health in Massachusetts since the establishment of the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1781.  Articles are judged on scholarship, originality, and clarity of expression.

The Massachusetts Medical Society, with some 25,000 physicians and student members, is dedicated to educating and advocating for the patients and physicians of Massachusetts. The Society, under the auspices of NEJM Group, publishes the New England Journal of Medicine, a leading global medical journal and web site, and Journal Watch alerts and newsletters covering 13 specialties.