- Scholarships are essential for many students. Disadvantaged students need scholarships to help fund health professions education and to allow them to practice in underserved areas without being saddled by debt.
- However, scholarships alone cannot increase diversity in the health professions. Students also need other types of non-financial support to succeed. Scholarships must be combined with other approaches that reach minority students early and support them throughout their education. This multi-pronged approach includes:
- Improved science education in middle and high schools with high concentrations of minority and low-income students.
- Enrichment opportunities for promising minority high school and college students, such as Saturday academies or summer courses.
- Partnerships between health professions schools and undergraduate colleges.
- Think strategically about the level of student to enter into the program. For undergraduate programs, sophomores and juniors seem best able to benefit from enrichment.
- One enrichment program found that freshmen may spend much of their first year making up for deficient secondary school education. (See Program Results on ID # 027709.)
- On the other hand, the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program focuses on college sophomores and juniors because it has found that summer enrichment programs are unlikely to help an unprepared college senior or college graduate for graduate medical education. (See Program Results on the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program.)
- To really increase minority representation in the medical school pipeline, however, it might be necessary to work with children in elementary and middle grades. (See Program Results on the Health Professions Partnership Initiative.)
- Don’t neglect the basics. The Summer Medical and Dental Education Program originally focused on its science curriculum to prepare students for professional education. But the program discovered that students also needed help with basic study and presentation skills. (See Program Results on the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program.)
- Provide students with networking opportunities. Informal interaction among students helps them build self-confidence. (See Program Results on the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program.)
- Track students after they leave the program. Develop a data system to track alumni, to be able to answer questions about their careers, such as how many decided to pursue health professions careers. (See Program Results on the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program.)
- Provide clear guidelines to individual sites. If there are separate sites for a single pipeline program, be sure each individual site has clear guidelines for how it is to operate. The Southern Rural Access Program found that each state implemented a wide range of interventions, which made it difficult for each state to learn from one another. (See Program Results on the Southern Rural Access Program.)
- Meet students where they are. RWJF’s training programs have learned to remove the logistical and educational barriers faced by students from minority or disadvantaged backgrounds. The Partnerships in Training program provided distance learning opportunities to make it easy for students in rural, underserved areas to participate. The Jobs to Careers program provides workplace learning opportunities that reach students in a more comfortable setting than a traditional classroom (from Sallie Anne George, RWJF Program Officer).
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