TouroCOM News

Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine graduated 239 new Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine last week from its two New York schools - in Harlem and Middletown.

Born and raised in Haiti, Amos Alcius - Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine Class of 2021 - survived the devastation of the 2010 earthquake, restarted his medical education in the United States and in June will begin residency at Tufts Medical Center in Boston in surgery-preliminary anesthesia.

Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine’s popular MedAchieve afterschool program has awarded its inaugural “Empowerment Scholarship” to Khushba Ahmed, a graduating senior at Harlem’s A. Philip Randolph High School.

It’s five-thirty in the morning in late February, and Sheneen Lalani, DO, is already in a car service to her hospital in the Bronx.

TouroCOM students heard from successful alumni of color during the school’s first Alumni of Color Mentoring event held virtually on April 8.

New York, N.Y. – Successful recruitment of underrepresented minorities (URMs) to medical school is enhanced when prospective applicants are able to interact with minority medical students who have already overcome the barriers.

Consolidated Edison is partnering with Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine (TouroCOM) Harlem in support of MedAchieve, the school’s popular afterschool STEM program that mentors underrepresented minority youth who want to become doctors or other health science professionals. Con Ed is supporting the award-winning program with a $5,000 grant, provided in December.

Atif Towheed, Ph.D., a third-year medical student at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine Middletown has received the 2020 AOF Burnett Osteopathic Student Researcher Award from the American Osteopathic Foundation. The monetary award is for Towheed and his colleagues’ work examining the attitudes of health care practitioners towards vaccination. For their study, “The Role of Health Care Providers in Community Immunization,” the researchers surveyed health care providers about their views, perspectives and practices on vaccination. Respondents provided their thoughts on barriers to vaccination.

The “first wave” may be behind us, but New Yorkers are steeling themselves as the coronavirus resurgence hits. When the pandemic swept NYC in the spring, Dr. Michael Erickson, TouroCOM Harlem ‘15 and Chief General Surgery Resident at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, Queens, had completed a fellowship in surgical critical care/burns and was spending his time doing surgeries. St. John’s was the first hospital in the borough with a positive COVID-19 patient, and was hit hard. Everyone had to adapt, and Dr. Erickson’s duties shifted overnight to caring for coronavirus patients in a sealed COVID-19 ICU. Now the national “DO of the Year” is back in the OR, reflecting on the experience and lessons learned as infections rise again.

As Veterans Day approaches, we spoke with TouroCOM Harlem student and Marine veteran Ben Olsen on why he enlisted, the military awards he received for his service, and why he's passionate about osteopathic medicine.