Complicating the Health Professional Pathway: The Intersectional Lives of Transfer Students Interested in Health Professions

• In Event: Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 2) Education, Socialization, and Academic Pathways

Abstract

Many have raised concern over the underrepresentation of racial minorities across healthcare professions and its impact on health equity. To remedy this scholarship has been attentive to the structural inequity ingrained in medical school for racial and ethnic minorities. However our research furthers our understanding of underrepresentation in health professionals by examining the experience undergraduate students seeking to be healthcare professionals who begin their educational journey in community college. This research project addresses this issue by asking: How does class background shape students’ experience of their health professional education (HPE) journey in community college? Specifically, how do students’ social and cultural capital inform how they approach their enrollment in and navigation of higher education as they pursue a health professional pathway? Our analysis stems from 21 transfer student interviews from a Midwestern university who are interested/working towards a health professional graduate program. We utilize the theoretical frameworks of social capital and intersectionality to make sense of the opportunities and barriers that students face on this pathway and to complicate our understanding of the role of community college in one's educational journey while being interested in HPE. Our findings highlight that students have distinct reasoning and circumstances that inform starting their educational journey in community college. Some students start at community college due to external factors, and community college acts as a lifeline to aid them in continuing their education. Others use community college strategically as they are aware that they will have a long and costly education in order to become health professionals. We also found that students' confidence in their career paths is highly informed by their social capital and this influences their confidence in pursuing their career path. Students with less social capital are often dependent on institutional support and programming to develop their confidence in comparison.

Authors

• Monserat Rodriguez-Rico, University of Illinois-Chicago

• Nicole Perez, University of Illinois at Chicago