ArticleFrontiers in medicine2026
The Medicine Success fund: financial support for widening participation medical students improves wellbeing and increases sense of belonging.
Article in Frontiers in medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: UK medicine is an elite profession engaging in widening participation (WP) efforts to diversify the workforce so as to better represent the society it serves, and thus, enhance patient care. Despite years of sector-wide efforts, medical students and doctors from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds remain minoritised in medicine. WP activities primarily focus on increasing access to medical degrees, while widening success for WP students once at university is underexplored or addressed. Socio-economic disadvantage shapes the experiences of WP medical students, who face unique financial and social barriers on their journey into medicine. These include financial pressures that affect their mental health, sense of belonging, academic performance and progression. Innovation: Designed and delivered in response to our WP students' experiences and underpinned by an ethos of wealth justice, Lancaster Medical School's Medicine Success project offers specific financial support to eligible WP students for the hidden costs associated with studying a medical degree. Its purpose is to mitigate structural inequities embedded within the medical curriculum and higher education funding contexts, supporting the mental health and sense of belonging of WP students, together with diversifying the profession and improving patient care. Approach: This community case study describes the rationale, context, design, and delivery of Medicine Success. It reports findings from a thematic analysis of qualitative student evaluations of the project over five academic years (2019-2024), reflecting on the impact and wider policy implications of this work. Conclusion: Analysis of Medicine Success student evaluations demonstrate that even minimal financial support for WP students reduces stress and increases belonging. The cognitive and emotional impact of financial scarcity on academic performance and student participation should not be underestimated. The core design values of Medicine Success may be transferrable to other medical schools. Curriculum reviews that incorporate a wealth justice perspective, and changes to maintenance funding for medical students are also required.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.