The Medicina Scholars Program

• In Event: 29.036 - Building the Latino Pipeline for Medical Careers: The Hispanic Center of Excellence Experience

Abstract

Goal and Objectives: The goal of the Medicina Scholars Program is to enrich the undergraduate experience of Latino students and develop a competitive pool of applicants to health sciences and graduate programs. The objectives are to: 1) increase the number of culturally competent individuals who can work with diverse populations; 2) expose students to the health professions; 3) create an awareness of health disparities in underserved communities; 4) advise participants about completing a bachelor's degree and meeting pre-health professions requirements; 5) assist students in the areas of academic research and community service/volunteerism; and 6) prepare students for the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), other standardized exams and the admissions process for medical and health programs.

Medicina Scholars achieves its goal and objectives through a three-year curriculum that focuses on the following topics:

• History of medicine;
• Health care disparities;
• Importance of research;
• Public health;
• Cultural competency;
• Clinical grand rounds; and
• Temas de salud.

These topics are covered each of the three years; each session is six-hours long and given one Saturday a month at the college. The “Public Health” topic was added in 2014 in partnership with the School of Public Health. The aim is to engage Scholars in the role of public health, ecological models of health and how public health models address health disparities affecting underserved communities through a series of workshops and team based learning activities allowing student engagement and networking.

Participants are also required to speak conversational Spanish and are encouraged throughout the program to use it in a clinical (i.e., volunteer as an interpreter) and non-clinical setting (e.g., assisting as an ESL tutor). However, in order to address whether a student is gaining enough experience in becoming culturally competent, we developed a two-hour Medical Spanish course titled, "Temas de Salud'' (Health Topics). Through the course students learn about various diseases affecting the Latino community (e.g., Diabetes or Cardiovascular Disease), break into team-based learning groups to examine patient case studies in Spanish and engage in meaningful dialogue to develop a treatment plan. The goal is for students to learn from each other and gain insight from other perspectives as if they were in a health care team. Throughout the year students participate in eight sessions of the course culminating at the end of the academic year with them volunteering at a local community health fair. We believe if participants engage early in activities that would allow them to explore and critically think about the structural determinants of health and the role they play in patient care; we can essentially cultivate a more conscious health professional who can readily serve our underserved communities.

Author

• Alicia J Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Chicago