Health Disparities Academy: Pathway for engaging minority students in the conversation of public health, allied health and mental health careers

Comprehensive programs enhancing career literacy among minority high school students and their support systems can aid in improving health and health care outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities. The Health Disparities Academy (HDA) was designed to increase the number of underrepresented minority high school students entering careers enabling them to contribute to the reduction of health and health care disparities. Two high school's AVID (Advanced VIA Individual Determination) programs in the Arlington, Texas ISD serve as the project site. Specifically, the goals of HDA are to: (a) create a pipeline that engages and mentors well-qualified African-American and Hispanic high school students for public health, mental health, and allied health professions; (b) increase high school students' awareness of health and health care disparities, and the concomitant need for well-trained health professionals among underrepresented minorities; (c) increase high school students' career literacy pertaining to public health/mental health and/or allied health; (d) improve the capacity of high school students' personal and family systems to more effectively support their advancement toward selected health profession career objectives; (e) develop a sustainable “conversations with the scientist-practitioner” model replicable for use by other high schools in Texas to support a pipeline of well-qualified high school students seeking to enter public health, mental health, and allied health professions. The purpose of this presentation is to describe the HDA, now in its second year of operation. It will challenge participants to consider a unique modality for addressing the problem of health disparities by developing programs for high school students.