Students from Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine volunteered during the last three weeks to deliver educational experiences at a summer camp for local area youth.
Six medical students led sessions as part of the OUWB-Hispanic Newcomer Outreach (HNO) Summer Anatomy Program. HNO is a collaborative effort between OUWB and Catholic Charities of Southeast Michigan (CCSM).
Sessions were held at a camp hosted by Pontiac-based La Casa Amiga, a nonprofit community service for immigrants and their families. Sessions were held via Zoom.
Volunteers from OUWB were second-year medical students Brandon Prentice, Eli Tukel, Mackenzie Schmidt, Nick Ludka, Daeun Jeong, and Andrew Santos. Activities took place in person after being held online last summer.
“It felt great to be back in person and work with everyone at La Casa Amiga,” said Santos, who also serves as president of the Latino Medical Student Association.
Jeong teaches one of the camp participants about about the gastrointestinal system. |
“This program is a great way to get kids from a similar background as me engaged and excited to learn about medicine,” he added. “Maybe it will inspire some of them to pursue a career in medicine.”
Sessions dedicated to specific organ systems were spread out across three weeks and featured a combination of lectures along with hands-on activities. There were an average of 10 students in each session.
Systems covered were eye/vision, respiratory, brain, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and musculoskeletal.
In an example of one of the activities, students used construction paper, tape, straws, Play-Doh, and empty gallon jugs of milk to demonstrate how their body’s bone structure gives them strength.
Tukel said lessons were based on those from previous years and reflected topics “that lend themselves well to visual and kinesthetic learning.”
“We really tried to make it as much of an active, engaging program as possible,” said Tukel.
Throughout the three-week period, Santos said campers were engaged and “very excited to learn.”
HNO recently was the topic of a paper published in the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement called “Medical Students as Mentors of Latinx Youth: A Model for Increasing Cultural Competence and Community Engagement in Medical Schools.”
Related: OUWB Latinx mentoring group publishes paper on program’s success First-aid training provided by OUWB students at popular summer camp |
The paper describes the establishment and success of the OUWB-HNO Mentoring Program that launched in 2016, and has since involved a total of 135 medical students working with 127 mentees over the course of about 4,500 hours.
The paper also describes the beneficial aspects of the program for participating medical students who serve as the mentors, as well as the positive impact on the mentees.
“The (Latinx) kids are communicating better with their parents, getting better grades, showing increased interest in studying,” said Claudio Cortes, Ph.D., assistant professor of immunology, OUWB Department of Foundational Medical Studies. Cortes helped created the program and serves as faculty coordinator.
“Eventually, the mentor role evolves because they become more of a role model…many of the kids now say they want to be a doctor.”
For more information, contact Andrew Dietderich, marketing writer, OUWB, at [email protected].
To request an interview, visit the OUWB Communications & Marketing webpage.
NOTICE: Except where otherwise noted, all articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. You are free to copy, distribute, adapt, transmit, or make commercial use of this work as long as you attribute Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine as the original creator and include a link to this article.
