When enrolling in medical school, students have traditionally said one of the most difficult parts is being admitted. Today, Brianne Camacho says, students are telling her that figuring out how to pay for their studies has become a bigger challenge.

Camacho, the director of financial aid and financial wellness for the School of Medicine and Public Health, is well aware of the factors at play. Lifetime student loan borrowing caps being implemented as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA or OB3) will disproportionately affect graduate and professional students. Putting money away for the “residency gap” – the two-to-three-month period between when a student finishes their studies but before their residency begins – adds more strain. And relocating for a residency can cost thousands of dollars more.

With these factors and others in mind, there’s a growing push to support students’ holistic financial health by connecting them with additional resources and providing fiscal education. In her role on the Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC) Holistic Student Support Working Group, Camacho is shaping these efforts beyond the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Serving students

Camacho first joined the AAMC five years ago when she began working in the Office of Student Financial Aid (OSFA), seeking to broaden her awareness of the specific financial challenges related to health education.

Learning from fellow health education financial aid professionals about the costs that students may not always consider has helped her paint a comprehensive financial picture for those with whom she works.

“I think the most impactful thing has been the outreach that got done with the medical education side to identify other areas in which our students needed to spend money that wasn’t included within their cost of attendance, it was never talked about, it was never anything that we could get them prepared to spend, but there were things that they were expected to spend, and I gained that knowledge by being in that group and talking to the medical education folks to understand other kind of unwritten financial expectations that our students are faced with,” she says.

Even if those costs are minimal, students appreciate being able to plan for them.

“There’s been small things that I wouldn’t have even thought to prepare students about,” she says, “like, ‘Make sure you buy compression socks because you are doing a lot of standing and a lot of walking,’ and compression socks… they always tell them that as soon as they start clinic, get compression socks, and so now every student, that’s something that they’re purchasing is their compression socks, or a water bottle or a lunchbox because some clinical sites don’t have refrigerators. And so just little small things like that, that don’t seem that big, but for a student that’s essentially living off of financial aid, it makes a huge difference to know what needs to be covered and what things they need to actually be purchasing.”

Demonstrating leadership

Part of the holistic support model involves bringing institutional support resources together in one place.

This is something UW–Madison excels at, Camacho says, noting that while she works for OSFA, her office is embedded within SMPH’s Health Sciences Learning Center. At an AAMC conference last year, Camacho and a colleague presented on this unique arrangement and walked through how attendees could create similar models at their institutions.

“Obviously not every school is the same, so we spent a lot of time just providing them with the framework of who they should be in contact with, because a lot of people didn’t even know where to start having those conversations,” she says, “and so we were able to put together a guiding form of, ‘If this exists at your school, go talk to them.’ If there is a tutoring advising group – we call them learning specialists here – if you have learning specialists, connect with them. If you have career advising, go connect with them. Get to know your records person.”

Even when resources are available, navigating the maze of funding sources, grants, and loans is a challenge. Through the AAMC, Camacho is able to identify these resources and create systems that allow students to succeed.

“I do what I do because I needed someone like me when I was going through school,” she says, “and so what energizes me is knowing that I serve as a person that students can come to get their questions answered in a way that makes sense to them, and then they can take that information back and put it into the good in the world that they’re trying to do by becoming our next set of health professionals. They do the science stuff, I handle the money stuff. That’s how we have a great working relationship.”

This article is part of a series highlighting the Division of Enrollment Management’s contributions to higher education beyond the boundaries of UW–Madison, in keeping with the Wisconsin Idea and our Strategic Framework.