Today, one in every four Americans belongs to a racial or ethnic minority group. Yet despite tremendous advances in health science in recent decades, minorities still fall victim to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and HIV/AIDS in numbers far greater than whites.

Clearly, it's going to take more than medicine alone to change this fact. It will take health services researchers who can understand the political, social, economic and environmental realities that have created such deep disparities in health and healthcare between minorities and whites - researchers whose minority perspectives can shape a wider discussion.

To prepare top candidates to pursue careers in health services research, the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI), the Health Care Systems Department of the Wharton School, and the VA Center of Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP) are co-sponsoring a summer program for rising undergraduate sophomores, juniors and seniors from underrepresented minority groups, or anyone interested in exploring the field of health services research. The SUMR program provides students with an opportunity to receive a stipend to conduct health services research on a topic of their choice, under the guidance of Penn faculty. The program is funded in part by a grant from CHERP.