How RaCE4Path Is Bridging a Critical Gap in Pathology Education

Across the healthcare landscape, concerns are growing about shortages in the medical laboratory workforce that could impact diagnostics, workloads, and patient care. Yet despite the critical role that the laboratory plays in medicine and that pathology has in patient care, many medical students have little meaningful exposure to the field. By the time they discover an interest in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, it’s often too late for them to switch their career focus.  

RaCE4Path (Research and Clinical Experience in Pathology) was created to help change that. This innovative program offered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s (UAB’s) Heersink School of Medicine (HSOM) offers a dual-track model that blends education and research with hands-on clinical experience.   

The program has branches for both medical students and undergraduates, exposing them to the full continuum of how pathology underpins diagnosis, disease discovery, and translational medicine. It’s a direct response to a recognized gap in the physician-scientist pipeline, explains Brandi McCleskey, MD, Associate Professor in the Forensics Division and Vice Chair of Education at UAB’s Department of Pathology and creator of the RaCE4Path program.  

Building a program to grow the pathology pathway   

UAB’s RaCE4Path program is unique. By exposing students to the pathology field early in their studies, the hope is that some might go on to specialize in pathology and perhaps even match within UAB’s residency training program.   

“The most unique piece about our summer research program is it’s not just bench research; it’s a career experience,” Dr. McCleskey says. “And it potentially creates a six-year relationship with a student, with the overall goal of trying to grow our pathology workforce.”  

Overall, the program has been successful. Their first RaCE4Path undergraduate student is now a fourth-year medical student in Alabama. And their first medical student is finishing a pathology residency at another school in the south.   

“The program created very solid applicants for pathology residencies,” Dr. McCleskey says. “We have yet to retain one at UAB, but they’ve gone to really good places.” The program “made them as competitive as they could be.”   

Dr. McCleskey believes that even if a student chooses to go into a different medical field, they’re still a success story.   

“I’ve always told the students that my number one goal is for them to make an educated decision about their future,” Dr. McCleskey says. “A lot of medical students don’t choose pathology because they don’t see pathology. This at least gives them a chance to learn at an early stage if pathology is right for them.”   

The structure of RaCE4Path  

To understand how RaCE4Path creates this kind of impact, it helps to review how the program is structured. While the eight-week undergraduate and medical school programs are similar, there are a few key differences.   

“The undergraduates go into a basic science laboratory for four weeks, and then for the next four weeks they do more of a hybrid where they sit in the clinical environment — working shoulder to shoulder with a resident and a faculty member— while also finishing their research project,” Dr. McCleskey says.  

When the program is over, the students present posters at UAB’s undergraduate student research day.  

In contrast, the medical school version (as part of the UAB Medical Student Summer Research Pathways occurring between the first and second year of medical school) is mostly all translational.   

“They’re in the clinical environment working with a pathologist who has some sort of translational project,” she says. “Most of them end up with me because they like forensics. But I’ve had them in other places as well, like transfusion medicine.”  

At the end of the program, the students present at UAB’s medical student research day, and most have given presentations about their work at national meetings, she says.   

Both eight-week programs help students experience exactly what it’s like to be a pathologist in a variety of subspecialties.   

“If they’re hanging out with me, they’re seeing a lot of autopsies,” she says. “Then they might rotate through transfusion medicine or cytology or surgical pathology. They get to see many different areas and learn just how many touchpoints pathology actually has.”  

Most recently, projects have ranged from topics including automated red cell exchange in patients with Sickle Cell disease to a review of deaths in the LGBTQ population to multiplex confocal imaging of immune cells in the brain.  

How RaCE4Path bridges a gap in medical education  

Early exposure is critical, Dr. McCleskey says, because many medical students simply don’t encounter pathology during their formal training at all. Instead, they may have to investigate pathology on their own to discover if it’s a good fit for them. But finding the time can be difficult, especially since it needs to be done early in a student’s medical school training.  

“The system is not set up for you to do a lot of career exploration while in medical school,” she says.   

That’s where RaCE4Path comes in. The program serves as a first-year medical student’s summer research scholarly activity, while simultaneously teaching them about pathology career options.   

“It gives them an opportunity to do things earlier in their medical school career and find out if pathology is right for them,” Dr. McCleskey says. “And even if it’s not, that’s OK too. I’ve had two students who spent a lot of time with us and ended up in psychiatry. That’s making an educated decision about their future. It may not add to the pathology workforce, but it creates some very knowledgeable clinical colleagues, and we benefit from that too.”   

In addition to RaCE4Path, Dr. McCleskey and her colleagues also offer a co-enrollment course for second- and third-year UAB HSOM medical students called “How the Dead Can Teach the Living.”   

The course includes watching an actual autopsy, which they might otherwise never have the chance to do, she says. A student who attended that course said it was “one of the most impactful experiences” he had in his entire medical school training.   

It’s another avenue that Dr. McCleskey has created to help medical students learn about pathology and what it would be like as a career.  

“You sprinkle in experiences and hope something catches on,” she says.   

How RaCE4Path shapes students’ futures  

RaCE4Path is shaping students’ futures and opening their eyes to new career paths they may not have known about otherwise.   

One student who attended the undergraduate RaCE4Path decided they wanted to pursue a career in forensic pathology.   

“The RaCE4Path program really opened my eyes to all the different pathology subspecialties,” they wrote to Dr. McCleskey. “I had no idea about all the different opportunities... The program pushed my interest even more towards pursuing a career in pathology — specifically forensic pathology!”  

Another student went on to apply for medical school after attending the program.   

“Starting this Fall, I will be attending the University of South Carolina Columbia School of Medicine to pursue my medical degree!” they wrote. “Thank you so much for the opportunity to gain such valuable medical experience at UAB.”    

A third student became an overdose awareness advocate after RaCE4Path.  

“It is so incredible to see how much I learned from the program and how it applies to real world experiences,” they wrote. “As of now, I am applying to an Internship with Jefferson County Health department that essentially is about bringing awareness to the overdose issue in our city and working with teams to help combat it.”   

As concerns about workforce shortages grow, RaCE4Path offers a model for how medical education can evolve to help address the issue. By exposing students to actual clinical experiences early in their studies, the program gives them an easy and compelling way to discover if pathology is right for them.  

If you’re interested in starting a similar program, Dr. McCleskey is happy to chat and answer any of your questions.