About MedPals

Brody MedPals is a student-run mentorship and outreach organization at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, partnering with middle schools, high schools, and early colleges across eastern North Carolina to expose K–12 students to medicine, science, and health-care careers. MedPals is built on a simple thesis: the doctors who stay are the ones who came from here.

How MedPals was founded

MedPals was founded in October 2023 at the Brody School of Medicine as a near-peer mentorship pipeline connecting medical students to under-resourced K–12 schools across Pitt County and surrounding rural counties. The organization was built on a simple idea: that students who never see a doctor who looks like them, or who never set foot inside a medical school, are far less likely to imagine themselves in health care. MedPals was designed to break that pattern by bringing medical students directly into rural classrooms, and by bringing rural students directly onto Brody's campus for hands-on workshops in anatomy, simulation, and clinical care. The doctors who stay, MedPals holds, are the ones who came from here.

In its first two years, MedPals grew from a small team running classroom modules into a sanctioned student organization recognized by both the Brody School of Medicine Office of Student Affairs and East Carolina University. The program now operates with a medical student leadership board and an undergraduate chapter at ECU, and runs three core programs: in-school anatomy and physiology modules, on-campus exposure days, and an annual flagship event called MedVentures that brings approximately 125 middle and high school students to Brody for a full day of immersive workshops and mentorship.

Recognition

In 2025, MedPals received East Carolina University's Outstanding Educational Program of the Year award and the Pitt County Board of Education's Creating Excellence in the East award. The program has been featured in ECU News Services, The Daily Reflector, and a short documentary on YouTube produced by ECU. In April 2026, MedPals was a featured initiative at the ECU GRAD Partnership End-of-Year Celebration, presenting alongside the Rural Education Institute's annual program review.

Where we work

MedPals partners with public middle schools, high schools, and early colleges across Pitt County and Greene County in eastern North Carolina. Current and recent partner schools include South Central High School, North Pitt High School, C.M. Eppes Middle School, Ayden-Grifton High School, E.B. Aycock Middle School, Farmville Central High School, Greene Central High School, Wellcome Middle School, J.H. Rose High School, D.H. Conley High School, and Pitt Early College. MedPals also delivers programming at the Young Scholars and Leaders Summer Camp, a community program led by Councilmember Portia Willis serving youth in eastern North Carolina. MedPals has completed four MedVentures cycles since its founding and has reached approximately 2,000 students across all programming.

Get involved

Educators, school administrators, and community partners interested in bringing MedPals programming to their schools can contact the medical school branch at brodymedpals@gmail.com or the undergraduate branch at ecumedpals@gmail.com. Prospective student volunteers at East Carolina University can join the undergraduate chapter through the official MedPals Office of Student Affairs page at medicine.ecu.edu/studentaffairs/medpals or follow our instagram at https://www.instagram.com/brodymedpals/.