P3.195: Empowering Youth: Cohort-Analysis of the Impact of the Health Career Collaborative Program on Adolescents Attending a High School in a Medically Underserved Community in Lubbock, Texas

Background: To promote diversity in healthcare, the Health Career Collaborative (HCC)–Lubbock provides mentorship from medical students, hands-on clinical training, and early exposure to healthcare careers for high school students from underserved backgrounds. This study aims to evaluate the program’s impact on Estacado High mentees, specifically assessing initial interest and knowledge about healthcare fields, insights developed through the program, and understanding of community healthcare topics.

Project Description: From September 2023 through April 2024, medical student mentors visited high school student mentees during their 8th period every 3 weeks. Following national HCC guidelines, sessions focused on mentor-mentee bonding and health-related topics including hands-on CPR, Emergency Medicine, Diabetes, Hypertension, the effects of vaping, and healthcare careers. Qualitative feedback from mentees was collected through an online IRB exempt pre-survey at the program's start and a post-survey at the program's end. A cohort analysis was conducted using two-tailed t-tests to assess participants’ developing understanding of various healthcare careers, their impact and roles, and their perception of achieving their medical career goals.

Discussion: The HCC initiative was successfully conducted for the 2023-2024 academic year with 21 mentors, 20 mentees, and 7 facilitators for a total of 48 participants. Approximately 90% of mentees were from racial and ethnic backgrounds underrepresented in health careers. Mentees experienced a significant increase in understanding of health provider duties between September and April (p < 0.05). Although there was no statistically significant difference in knowledge of different health career options or in the development of plans to attain career goals, the trend was improvement for all measures evaluated. These findings suggest the curriculum may need improvement in providing long-term learner-centered career planning and interprofessional health career exposure. Through informal feedback, we learned the mentees enjoyed engaging with relevant health topics in an active manner and appreciated forming meaningful relationships with their medical student mentors, even wishing the mentors visited more frequently. Limitations regarding evaluation included overlap with standard high school curriculum and somewhat low post-survey response rate. Based on survey takeaways, HCC-Lubbock can revise its curriculum to implement sessions focusing on interprofessional healthcare education and goal planning.

Conclusion: HCC-Lubbock empowers adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds by equipping them with skills and knowledge to recognize their potential, pursue meaningful goals, and take charge of their own health. The participating medical students gain valuable advocacy skills by learning from their learners’ experiences, providing social support, and increasing health literacy. Moving forward, future HCC-Lubbock leaders are tasked with further refining the curriculum to better prepare mentees to enter health careers. Ultimately, HCC-Lubbock transforms teenagers into well-informed patients and socially conscious future health professionals. The curriculum has positively impacted the youth of Lubbock and has the potential to benefit students in other communities as well.