Hope for the Future: Medcon 2026
May 11, 2026
By Conaire Bradfield
Two weeks ago, I was given the opportunity to serve as the emcee for the 2026 Novus Medicus MedCon conference. The goal of the conference was to inspire vocations to healthcare by introducing premedical students to the medical training environment and inviting students to explore further the support the Catholic Medical Association has to offer.
On the drive to Notre Dame’s campus, I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve experienced the valuable education that comes with the CMA Medical Student and Resident Boot Camp and the CMA Annual Education Conference. I’ve gotten to encounter premedical students who visit the CMA booth at FOCUS’s annual SEEK conference the past few years. But I didn’t know how integrating some of the best of what CMA has to offer into one short weekend was going to play out.
We had a plan set in motion with great speakers affiliated with CMA and Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, and the conference went according to that plan (a miracle within itself). What surprised me were the attendees at the conference. They came in from many different stages in the journey to medicine: From college freshmen finishing general chemistry to juniors who already had a preliminary acceptance to a medical school.
I thought a major part of my role as emcee would be to motivate. As it turns out, I didn’t need to do a single thing. The stories shared by our physician speakers pointed to a profound hope: It is a reality that one can authentically live out the Catholic faith in the practice of medicine. There is no motivational speech that can be substituted for that hope.
For some, MedCon was the first experience bucking the cultural trend to “leave the faith at the door” when working in medicine. Physicians across the fields of Anesthesiology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Psychiatry, Dermatology, Oncology, Family Medicine, and Palliative Care shared their experiences of integrating their faith into each of their unique specialties. Though primarily a bioethics conference, students received an education on how to live out the faith boldly through the little things that lie in the journey ahead. Be it in studying, being bold in the classroom, and lovingly encountering patients, the students were taught how to live an authentic witness to faith. And they got to do it in community with one another.
I pray that their newly budding community continues past this conference. I think back to Dr. Kate Kondratuk’s advice on the importance of finding “toilet paper” friends (friends who would go out into the depths trying to find toilet paper during its scarcity at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic). Without the right friends with you on the journey, the pressures of the medical profession can be overwhelming.
My greatest gratitude was that I got to plan this conference with my “toilet paper” friends. To Talia Caridi, Isabella Contolini, and David Talarico, all of whom I’ve been blessed to be on my journey with all the way since my first CMA Boot Camp in 2023, I am grateful for you. To Dr. Scrafford, who has put on this conference as part of his many duties steering the ship of Novus Medicus, I am grateful for you. To all the speakers, attendings, residents, and medical students who gave their time and talent to make MedCon 2026 possible, I am grateful for you. To David Younger and Margaret McManawat at the de Nicola Center, who have been wonderful hosts at the University of Notre Dame, I am grateful for you.
The theme of the 2026 conference was “To The Heights of Healthcare,” calling to mind the heroic virtue and enthusiasm of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati. In his biography, A Man of The Beatitudes, his sister Luciana writes “Here suddenly is a Christian in an environment that makes us think that such a phenomenon belongs in the past.” It is inspiring to be in an organization of such Christians in the environment of medicine today.
Conaire Bradfield is a Pre-Doctoral OMM Fellow at Des Moines University. He s a member of CMA’s Novus Medicus, a community of aspiring and early-career medical professionals, who strive to be faithful Catholics and excellent in their medical craft.