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Mentorship Where It Counts
According to reports from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 40% of students from the lowest income brackets attempt college, compared to nearly 80% from the wealthiest groups. The gap becomes even more pronounced in medical careers. Recent reports show about 75% of medical school applicants come from families in the top two income brackets, while only 5% come from the lowest income group.
Those statistics helped launch the Lubbock chapter of the Health Career Collaborative. This national nonprofit organization exists to support youth from underserved communities to graduate high school, pursue college education and consider careers in health care. The Lubbock chapter serves 40 to 50 high school students annually at Estacado High School in Lubbock, Texas, with the help of more than 70 TTUHSC medical student mentors.
Siddiqui — along with other first-and-second year medical students, and guidance from School of Medicine faculty sponsors Lauren Cobb, MD, MEd; Alice Villalobos, PhD; Felix Morales, MD; Jody Randall, EdD; and Ariel Santos, MD, MPH — launched the program in 2022.
Interactivity is key to the program’s growth as medical students do more than present PowerPoints to the high schoolers. They also write plays focusing on the importance of mental health, create medical board games and use clay or cardboard to make models of the human heart. Siddiqui hopes that creativity and mentorship will allow the program to grow and allow more high school students from underserved communities to realize they can join the health care field.
“One unfortunate reality with similar programs is they sometimes fade once the institution meets its goal,” Siddiqui says. “We hope what we’ve built (at Estacado) will last long after we’ve completed our training at TTUHSC.”