Vital Signs
A JOURNALIST AT JAMA
When she was an undergraduate at UCLA, Julie Suzumi
Young planned to go into journalism. She spent 40 hours
a week working at the campus newspaper and was a reporting
intern at the Los Angeles Times. The idea of being a doctor never
crossed her mind. But now that she's a fourth-year student at
DMS, she's back where she started career-wise—sort of.
Young is currently the deputy editor for the student section of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)— one of the best-read medical journals in the world. She'll be one of Student JAMA's nine student editors through June of 2005, when she'll also graduate (she's spreading her fourth year at DMS over two years so she can also discharge her editorial responsibilities). Each student editor is responsible for developing one theme issue a year—from writing the call for papers to directing the editorial review process—as well as for overseeing a special project.
Young says the stint has been "a trial by fire" but that "JAMA's editor-in-chief, Catherine DeAngelis, is extraordinarily approachable and really supportive of students. . . . Dr. DeAngelis gives us amusing but passionate homilies on the importance of integrity," Young adds, noting that she and her fellow editors "don't even think about using a pen with the name of a pharmaceutical company on it in her presence." A.S.