Abstract
BackgroundMinorities are underrepresented in health professions and efforts to recruit minority students into health careers are considered a way to reduce health disparities. There is little research about the effectiveness of these programs, other than satisfaction. This study aimed to measure program effects on student understanding of and interest in health careers.MethodsStudents took a career interest inventory, completed a scale measuring their self-reported understanding and interest in health careers, and wrote essays about health careers before and after completing a 1 week on campus internship on health careers and after a 9 month follow up distance mentoring program where they continued to interact with university faculty by videoconference about career options. Changes in inventory, scale, and essay scores were analyzed for changes over time using Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney tests.ResultsInventory scores were unchanged over time, but scale and essay scores trended upward significantly post internship and mentoring.ConclusionHealth career education and mentoring programs can positively affect student knowledge of health careers and their attitudes about them. The study’s methods extend measures of program impact beyond satisfaction.
Highlights
Minorities are underrepresented in health professions and efforts to recruit minority students into health careers are considered a way to reduce health disparities
Minorities are under-represented in health professions and there are ongoing efforts to motivate minority middle and high school students to pursue health science careers
Kuder scores are broken down for the career clusters related to the health sciences and those related to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)
Summary
Minorities are underrepresented in health professions and efforts to recruit minority students into health careers are considered a way to reduce health disparities. There is little research about the effectiveness of these programs, other than satisfaction. Minorities are under-represented in health professions and there are ongoing efforts to motivate minority middle and high school students to pursue health science careers. Very little is known about the effects of career education programs and there are few measures of program impact other than student satisfaction. The effects of a health career education and mentoring program for middle and high school students are reported in this article using measures of student career knowledge and choice. Existing health career education research and the difficulties of measuring career interventions are discussed.
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