In support of SHM’s commitment to nurturing the hospitalist workforce, SHM presented its Hospital Medicine Scholarship Fund, made possible by its Keystone Sponsor, Vituity, and its Visionary Sponsor, Sound Physicians, at SHM Converge 2025 in Las Vegas.
The objective in developing this scholarship fund is to support the growth of the hospital medicine workforce by identifying medical students who are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and have demonstrated a commitment to health equity and improving care for underserved communities.
This year’s recipients of these $25,000 medical education scholarships are Kidus Shiferawe and Cheryl Mensah.
Kidus Shiferawe
Kidus Shiferawe is a third-year medical student at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine (UKCOM) in Lexington. Originally from Ethiopia, he has spent most of his life in Kentucky, where he holds a bachelor’s in biomedical science and a master’s in public health from Eastern Kentucky University.
As vice president of the Student National Medical Association at UKCOM, Mr. Shiferawe co-chaired the Regional Medical Education Conference, empowering underrepresented pre-medical and medical students to become “clinically excellent, culturally competent, and socially conscious physicians.”
As part of his scholarly concentration in clinical and translational research, he uses evidence-based approaches to address healthcare disparities, including research on socioeconomic, geographical, and clinical factors impacting lung cancer screening. He has also demonstrated strong academic leadership through research publications and presentations at local and national conferences.
Additionally, Mr. Shiferawe serves on the UKCOM admissions committee, where he helps identify applicants committed to serving underserved populations. Passionate about health equity, he is dedicated to improving care for marginalized communities and plans to pursue a residency in internal medicine.
Mr. Shiferawe’s scholarship is made possible by its Keystone Sponsor, Vituity.
Cheryl Mensah
Cheryl Mensah is a third-year medical student at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Prior to medical school, she worked as a mental health counselor and obtained her undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis. She previously served as Feinberg SNMA president, and as chair of the Feinberg Community Engagement and Advocacy Committee, Ms. Mensah launched ‘Humans of Feinberg,’ a campaign celebrating the stories of unsung community members and published an editorial in The Chicago Tribune exploring how generational wealth, social capital, and other structural and historical barriers limit minorities from pursuing medical careers.
Ms. Mensah currently serves as chief medical student of a primary care clinic at Feinberg and leads a curricular elective exploring how epidemiology shapes internal medicine cases, as well as makes global health education more accessible for students unable to travel, through a virtual collaboration with PA students in Tanzania.
She recently published a manuscript letter in Circulation, investigating the relationship between cardiovascular health and mortality across racial/ethnic subgroups and nativity, and has published a manuscript in the Cardiovascular Journal of Africa investigating patient-reported outcome measures in cardiovascular care.
Ms. Mensah’s scholarship is made possible by its Visionary Sponsor, Sound Physicians.