The Masters Program/Thesis:
The M.S. degree is an academic degree in Health and Medical Sciences and requires writing a research thesis.  Thus, the M.S. portion of the JMP offers students the opportunity to do academic research while in medical school.  Research may continue work begun as an undergraduate.  The topic must be health-related and the research supported by a coherent and scholarly program of study.

A major benefit of the master's program is the opportunity to work closely with senior faculty from the academic departments at Berkeley.  The student and their faculty adviser develop and refine the research topic and work out an appropriate schedule of seminars and courses.  Courses in research methodology are required.

Topics may be scheduled in the historical, social, ethical, epidemiological or policy aspects of human health and disease.  Alternatively, students may develop a deeper inquiry that builds upon previous research experience or education.  A sampling of thesis titles gives some indication of the range of topics selected by Joint Medical Program students.  A complete index is located at:  http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/OPTO/tiindex.html. 

Sample of thesis titles:

• Predictors of health services utilization among older Americans

• Social impacts and limitations of microcredit in the alleviation of poverty: A study of the Orangi Pilot Project

• Revisiting the great organ bazaar: An evaluation of the current practice and dialogue of kidney sales in India

• Spirituality and the transition to death among hospice patients

• The problem of the impersonal physician

• Primum non nocere: International humanitarian medical relief in post-cold war conflict

• God's will: Social constructions of health and healing in the Mississippi Delta

• Cigarette smoking and its risk factors in Chinese adolescents

• Validation of the electronic tuberculosis surveillance system in Gaborone, Botswana

• Does 1 + 1 = 2? Sympathetic and adrenocortical reactivity as predictors of behavior in middle childhood

• Student-run health clinics: developing a vision for the future

• HIV and breastfeeding in Zimbabwe

• Respecting the wishes of the families: Burial, mourning, and policies following Srebrenica

• Tobacco Marketing in the Alternative Press, 1994-99

• Intramarital Factors and Risk of HIV Infection Among Married Women in Chennai, India

• Is cytomegalovirus associated with type 1 diabetes a meta-analysis?

• Democracy and the patient-physician relationship.