On Sept. 17, Future Practicing Physicians Network held its first meeting. The officers introduced themselves and briefly described the club’s goal — which is to educate members about careers in medicine and health — and the activities that would be held throughout the year.

Activities that FPPN usually do every year include inviting guest speakers, performing suturing and dissections, learning about internships, giving research advice and offering volunteer opportunities.

Senior and co-president Tiffany Chen also described additional activities they hope to hold.

“We’re planning to have some medical professionals come and speak, like a little fair, so people can go over to ask them about their research,” Chen said. “Like we can have representatives from each summer camp to come and talk to people.”

Junior and public relations officer Varsha Subramanyam also expressed her hopes of reaching out to more professionals to offer guidance to members on their path to a possible career in medicine. She hopes to bring in nurses, doctors and researchers to present their fields.

“I feel like in high school you don’t really have an idea of a path you want to go through, so seeing different people and their different paths might help,” Subramanyam said.

She also pointed out how activities like these help differentiate the club from other science clubs on campus.

“We’ve kind of created that niche that’s focused around health care and possibly becoming future physicians,” Subramanyam said. “It’s more tightly knit because everyone’s looking towards the same field or the same interests, rather than the broad topic of science.”

Senior and co-president Ashley Wang also sees this as a strength, and makes it a goal of the club this year to be able to expand their focuses within medicine, as well as emphasize its importance in the real world.

“We would like to branch out to cover more different fields of medicine,” Wang said. “Everyone thinks of just doctors specifically, so maybe we could branch out to specific types of doctors.”

Check out the powerpoint from the interest meeting below.