ome medical students focus on clinical care. Some focus on research. It takes a special person to do both—and excel in both arenas. Someone like Christian Hunter.

By the time he completed LLU’s MD/PhD program, Christian had co-authored more than 20 journal articles, including leadauthored articles in Nature Medicine and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. He presented papers at 20-plus medical conferences. He also completed a clinical research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where he was co-investigator on a clinical study and co-patented a new pulmonary hypertension drug for infants. A drug that, Christian says, “could cut the cost of treatment from several thousand dollars to a couple dollars a day. It’s inexpensive to make, and we control the patent, so we control the price.”

It’s all part of Christian’s quest to pursue social justice in his medical practice. “Medicine should be available for all who need it,” he says. “Particularly for underrepresented minorities, whose diseases often aren’t studied.”

To that end, Christian headed to Harvard University after graduation, where he’s in residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “They already have a large community outreach program, both in the local community and in Haiti, Peru, and other countries where the populations need better health care.”

Christian started preparing for that residency before he took his first class at LLU. “I had a fellowship at LLU the summer before I began med school and that got me interested in research. The faculty encouraged me to take an unconventional path—they opened up their labs and treated me like a colleague.”