Beginning in summer 2017, Brown University's Alpert Medical School in Providence, R.I., will offer a dual MD-MPA program, reports The Brown Daily Herald.
Through the program, students will spend four years taking classes at the Alpert Medical School and Brown's policy department to earn a doctorate of medicine and a master's of public affairs.
Brown is the first university in the U.S. to offer a program like this, according to the report.
"Healthcare politics is such an important field ... and it's also really one of our most difficult policy problems. Someone who is trained both as a physician and as a policy analyst can really come to these problems ... with real skill," said James Morone, PhD, director of Brown's Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy.