AMSA at Vanderbilt:

The Vanderbilt chapter is dedicated to fulfilling the national mission and goals of the American Medical Student Association. We are a cohort of pre-health students who are committed to academics, service, community, and public health awareness. We believe in equal opportunity and thus are dedicated to providing all students with any resources they need to successfully navigate being a pre-health student at Vanderbilt. Furthermore, we strive to embrace the diversity within Vanderbilt’s pre-med body and will work to cultivate friendship and collaboration in hopes of creating a more united pre-medical community.

We strongly believe that it takes more than medical school to become a great physician, so in addition to providing students with academic guidance and resources, we are committed to creating opportunities for students to learn about and discuss health and medicine from a non-academic approach; this means engaging members in discussions about the social, moral, and ethical obligations of the profession of medicine, as well as improving students’ awareness about the cultural, social, and environmental determinants that affect individuals’ [particularly minorities'] health.

Our Mission: To create visionary future physicians through learning, meaningful public service, activism and community.

National AMSA Description (from national website)
The American Medical Student Association (AMSA), with a half-century history of medical student activism, is the oldest and largest independent association of physicians-in-training in the United States.

Today, AMSA is a student-governed, national organization committed to representing the concerns of physicians-in-training. AMSA members are medical students, premedical students, interns, residents and practicing physicians. Founded in 1950, AMSA continues its commitment to improving medical training and the nation's health.

How is AMSA different from other organizations? When you join AMSA, you become part of a vital force of future physicians who believe that patients and health professionals are partners in the management of health care and that access to high-quality health care is a right and not a privilege. At AMSA, activism is a way of life. Student idealism is transformed into meaningful public service, innovation and institutional change.