Achieving PHIT’s promise in advancing health requires a diverse skilled workforce. Comprised of 10 institutions, the Gaining Equity in Training for Public Health Informatics and Technology Consortium (GET PHIT) aims to train 2,000 students/professionals in PHIT. Given the underrepresentation of minoritized college students in bootcamps/paid internships, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), second largest HSI nationally (32,000 students, 91% Hispanic/Latinx, 55% first-generation), capitalizes on its Consortium membership to ensure its students access educational opportunities that enhance their PHIT skills and career prospects. The UTRGV team, thus, developed locally-accessible, culturally-tailored approaches to recruit students into GET PHIT bootcamps/paid internships.

First, we established a UTRGV project-specific email/website. Next, we met with college/program leaders to share information about the 4-year initiative and how it supports student success. For bootcamps/internships recruitment, we enlisted the assistance of college leaders and UTRGV’s Career Center and used electronic bulletins, listservs, and flyers. To ensure a competitive UTRGV internship applicant pool, we implemented several strategies: (1) worked with faculty/instructional designers to integrate PHIT curricular components into several courses; (2) leveraged institutional resources to support resume preparation/personal statements; (3) held information sessions to provide guidance, connect students with resources, and make the opportunity feel attainable/accessible.

First-year results reveal high UTRGV representation in bootcamp/internship applications/participation. To date, second-year data reveals a higher number of UTRGV applicants relative to other Consortium members.

The success of our strategies underscores the need for tailored approaches for minoritized, first-generation college students to benefit from capacity-building opportunities aiming to diversify the PHIT workforce.

Research has shown that pathway programs are effective in diversifying the public health workforce. To expand the participation of students from underrepresented groups in public health careers and programs, the UMass Amherst Center for Community Health Equity Research (CCHER) launched the Public Health Equity Young Scholars Summer Enrichment Program in 2021. Developed by the CCHER Community Research Liaison, this program for rising 7th-10th graders encourages youth from historically underrepresented groups to explore higher education and public health careers . Our broader goal is to help address health disparities by diversifying the public health professional workforce.

Over a two-week period in summer 2021 and 2022, 29 students from underrepresented groups participated in the program at UMass Amherst Center Springfield. The majority of students (n=15) were Black/ African American female. 3 participants were Black/ African American male, 4 were Latino male, 5 Latina female and 2 White female. CCHER-affiliated faculty led activities on the foundations of public health, nutrition, epidemiology, and health promotion and policy. Students used community mapping and Photovoice to document assets and challenges in their communities. They presented their findings to parents, instructors, and community members at the end of each week. Youth participants gained a deeper understanding of health equity from classroom activities and learned to advocate for themselves and their communities in the Photovoice presentations.

Creative arts, including poetry, are instrumental to community health, wellbeing, and healing. Every social movement of health consequence has been backed by songs/poems to codify resistance, galvanize community, inspire imagination, and testify for more just futures. For those of us “at the margins,” creative modes of expression have always been critical to our learning and survival. For us, “poetry is not a luxury” (Lorde). Yet, the deliberate inclusion of poetry as a medium of epistemological and pedagogical relevance within public health training is scarce. This disconnect presents as a matter of epistemic (in)justice and an opportunity to more expressly center the margins in the training of future public health professionals.

As part of the People’s Social Epi Project in Portland, OR (PSEP^PDX), youth researchers attend 24 training sessions on public health, social epi, place/health, and participatory research methods. They also attend a series of poetry workshops designed to facilitate their creative engagement with/analysis of their daily place-based health experiences. Grounded in public health critical race praxis principles of “voice” and “social construction of knowledge”, and critical theory notions of “epistemic disobedience” and “epistemic witnessing”, this work engages poetry as praxis to facilitate critical consciousness among youth and spark their interest as future public health scholar-poets. Here, we detail 8 poetry workshops held over summer 2022 with ~25 youth. This includes summary of PSEP^PDX training, discussion of workshop prompts/writing activities, and presentation of example poems. We close with a summary of workshop-related poetry competitions, and share future directions to center poetic knowledge(s) within youth public health training/YPAR for local social epi.