Health Professions Highway – Creating a Self-sustaining, Culturally Diverse Pipeline to Develop Future Healthcare Professionals

Photo by Kenny Eliason via Unsplash

Health Professions Highway: Creating a Self-Sustaining, Culturally Diverse Pipeline to Develop Future Healthcare Professionals was developed as a collaborative project by 2 Biological Sciences faculty members, Barbekka Hurtt and Nancy Lorenzon, and community partner College Track-Aurora (CT-A) (https://collegetrack.org/who-we-are). College Track supports high school students toward successfully completing high school and graduating from college. The goals of this collaboration were to provide CT-A students interested in health care careers exposure to: the college environment, greater understanding of different health professions and academic requirements / expectations / pathways of various health professions careers, and the challenges facing health care patients and providers. We had an amazing week with fantastic students, DU undergraduate mentors, and a diverse array of activities!

We hosted 16 rising high school juniors and seniors the week of June 25-30, 2017. Students lived in Nelson Hall for the week, and had a jammed packed week full of hands-on activities. Eight DU undergraduate students served as mentors for the students, participating with the students in all activities each day, and giving the students some real insight into the life of a college student. The week started with a performance and discussion regarding healthcare equity from the Kaiser Permanente Arts Integrated Resources, and continued into the afternoon with a discussion around health disparities. Tuesday found the students starting the morning in the RSECS Innovation Lab learning about 3D printing and creating a 3D printed model of their own – thank you Michael Caston and Ethan. The remainder of the day was spent in “typical” college lecture and laboratoryexperiences, learning about cardiovascular anatomy and physiology, and conducting experiments to test their respective mentor’s cardiovascular health. Although there was a bit of fear about how “boring” and “hard” the lecture and lab might be, the anecdotal sentiment from the students was that they were more interesting and fascinating than expected – we consider that a positive outcome! 

Reports from the mentors that day were that student questions centered largely around “how much do you have to study in college?” Wednesday the students had the opportunity to visit Porter Hospital for the entire day and rotate through eight different health care teams – thank you Porter Hospital staff for the absolutely amazing day! In addition, Wednesday night the students had a barbeque dinner (from Roaming Buffalo BBQ) with a Health Professionals Panel - 11 health care providers/students from the Aurora community and CU Anschutz. Again, we can’t thank these health professionals enough for their time and interest in being a part of this inaugural program. Thursday the students had the opportunity to talk with a wide variety of DU programs including Admissions, Financial Aid, Center for Multicultural Excellence, Health and Counseling Center, Stadium Medical and the DU EMS Club, as well as Career Services. To all these DU community members, we extend our sincere gratitude and thanks for your willingness to be a part of this program! Friday the mentors showed the students around campus and talked a bit about their favorite aspects of college. In addition to their 9-5 schedule each day, the students had a research project they worked on each evening – each student picked a health topic of interest. Interim science librarian Cyndi Landis gave them a fantastic introduction to the process and resources available to conduct research. The Writing Center provided the icing on the proverbial cake, by printing out each student’s poster on Friday.

At our final banquet dinner on Friday night, the students presented their research posters to their families and other community members. We could not have had the success we did without all the different DU and Denver/Aurora community members being willing to be a part of this program – it truly did take everyone to make it such a success!