Early intervention is important to retaining students in a pipeline that leads to a health care career. Summer programs are successful, but may not be enough to help students with difficult science courses in college, especially chemistry. However, another important conclusion is that much more needs to be done to help students find mentors with whom they can develop relationships and to give them opportunities to work in health care settings.
The purpose of this follow-up study was to ascertain the career selections and college majors of 101 students from minority groups who had attended a summer enrichment program at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta from 1979 to 1983, to determine whether the program had been successful influencing the students to choose a health-related career. All the students had completed high school within the previous five years; they were contacted by mailed questionnaires or telephone. The study was completed by contacting the colleges where the students had enrolled and through the use of the Student and Applicant Information System of the Association of American Medical Colleges. The findings showed that the students had enrolled in and graduated from college and that a significant number of the students had chosen medicine or another health-related career. The study suggests the importance of early academic intervention for students from minority groups to choose a medical career.
The black graduates of the predominantly white MCGSM chose primary care specialties and remained in Georgia to a greater extent than did other MCGSM graduates. Like their counterparts from the historically black medical schools, the black graduates from MCGSM--in relatively large percentages--chose primary care specialties and served minority patients, low-income populations, and/or rural areas.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.