Med Student Justin Mutter Earns Pisacano Scholarship

University of Virginia medical student Justin Mutter has been named one of five Pisacano Scholars for 2012. The scholarship, worth up to $28,000, is awarded to fourth-year medical students who show a strong commitment to family medicine and who demonstrate qualities such as leadership, academic achievement and integrity, in addition to performing notable community service.

Mutter’s many accomplishments include being named a Rhodes Scholar and serving a two-year stint in Haiti as a health worker for Zanmi Lasante, the flagship project of the global health group Partners in Health. In Haiti, his responsibilities included managing an outpatient nutrition program as well as agriculture and food security initiatives with a large farmers’ organization. He also was a member of the board of directors of Zanmi Lasante’s Program on Social and Economic Rights, which aims to address the social disparities that put the group’s patients at increased risk of disease.

During his time in the School of Medicine’s Generalist Scholars Program, Mutter has assisted with a community health status assessment for local public housing residents and served as a summer fellow at the Healthy Appalachia Institute in Southwest Virginia. That work reflects the future family physician’s career goals of improving care for underserved populations.

Mutter earned his bachelor’s degree in modern literature and religious studies in 2003 from the College of Arts & Sciences, and he was an Echols Scholar. Before returning to U.Va. for medical school, he worked as a research associate for health policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress in Washington, D.C.

Mutter is the second U.Va. medical student to be named a Pisacano Scholar since the program began in 1993. The scholarships are awarded by the Pisacano Leadership Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the American Board of Family Medicine.