‘Mini-Med School’ Briefs Virginians on Health Care : Medicine: The 10-week course covers the brain, the immune system, microbiology, biochemistry, genetics and health policy. Students are not doctors in training; they just want to learn.

Dr. Sammye Newman points a laser light at different structures of DNA in the image projected on the wall. The room is dark, but several students blindly scribble notes they hope to review later.

As Newman explains the biochemical relationship between DNA and nucleotides, the students strain to catch every word.

Second-year medical school? Not exactly.

It’s the Medical College of Virginia’s Mini-Med School, where the students are lawyers, homemakers and truck drivers who are enrolled for the sheer fun of learning.

About 250 students gather at the Science Museum of Virginia’s planetarium for a 10-week series of lectures about the brain, the immune system, microbiology, biochemistry, genetics and health policy--many of the same topics covered by medical students in their first two years of training.

There are no homework assignments, no tests. The classes are free.

The mini-med students aren’t training to become doctors or surgeons; they just want to understand health care and science.

Bonnie Bracey, 50, makes a two-hour trip each week to learn more about science so she can share it with the fourth- and fifth-graders she teaches in Arlington.

“I think we lose a lot of students,” said Bracey, 50. “I’m a teacher who wants to be on the cutting edge of learning so I can excite my students.”

“I want to go to medical school,” said Ann-Robin Anthony, 15, a sophomore at St. Catherine’s school in Richmond. Her father is a doctor specializing in orthopedics.

Frances Garnett, a 72-year-old homemaker, said she has “an intense interest in medicine and what it has accomplished in the past 10 years.”

Dr. Bruce A. Fuchs, an immunologist who organized the Richmond program, said other mini-med schools are located in Denver; Hartford, Conn.; Little Rock, Ark.; and Birmingham, Ala.

The National Institutes of Health, the country’s mecca for biomedical research, is using the program for a national model. Fuchs is at NIH for two years to help start a mini-med school at NIH in Bethesda, Md.

“We were impressed with the response that Bruce had gotten,” said Bonnie R. Kalberer, director of the Office of Science Education Policies at NIH. “We think it’s very important to help the public understand more about science. The issue of health care and health care reform has become an agenda item for more people.”

She said NIH plans to offer a mini-med school in the spring, then try it out at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and another federal facility in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. The ultimate goal is to “write it up as a national model and encourage other organizations to use it,” she said.

The appetite for science and medical information is increasing as people begin to question the nation’s health care system.

“I bought into the common knowledge that adults aren’t interested in science and are kind of turned off by the whole thing,” Fuchs said. “Contrary to common belief, I found people were very hungry for knowledge.”

He said he expected about 70 participants for MCV’s first mini-med school in March, 1992. More than 700 applied for the 250 slots awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis. The fourth mini-med school began Sept. 8, and there is still a waiting list for subsequent sessions.

Whitby Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Richmond pays most of the estimated $6,000 to $7,000 to run the mini-med school. The Science Museum donates use of the planetarium and the MCV Foundation pays for incidentals, such as preparing lecture slides.

The MCV experts teach for free.

“Part of what we’re seeing is people are beginning to want to be more informed about their health care,” Fuchs said. “People want a second opinion. They want to know what their options are.”

“They’re often bewildered by what physicians may tell them. Here they get that information in a very relaxed, non-threatening environment.”