University of Pittsburgh Health Career Scholars Academy
For over 30 years, the University of Pittsburgh Health Careers Scholars Academy (UPHSCA) has provided a unique educational opportunity for nearly 4,000 high school students who are interested in health care careers. Started in 1991 as the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Health Care (PGSHC), this four-week residential academic summer program introduces the students to the world of health care, including issues of primary care, prevention, public health, career exploration, human growth and development, and areas of practice.
Using didactic and hands-on, experiential methods, attendees receive a glimpse of health care ‘behind the curtain’. A shadow experience, site visits, small discussion groups, guest speakers, simulations, team projects and presentations, videos, independent study, and cultural events are included in the UPHCSA curriculum. Another important aspect of the program is helping students to learn, understand and develop professional expectations and behavior.
Seventy-five percent of our graduates are now working in some field of health care. More recent participants continue to pursue their studies and explore possible career paths in medicine.
Your support of UPHCSA will help us provide this unique experience to other students. With your gift, we can purchase supplies for hands-on activities such as Surgical Knot Tying, Older Adult Sensitivity Training, and the fruit fly experiment presented by the Pennsylvania Society for Biomedical Research. It can pay for a school bus for a concentration course field trip to a water treatment plant or for transporting attendees to a Shadow Day site. In addition, a donation can provide scholarship money to a qualified student.
Help future students pursue their dreams like these alumni:
I am now a faculty member in the division of geriatrics at the University of Pennsylvania (mostly do clinical work in a variety of settings and teach medical trainees). The program had a fundamental impact on who I am today; I frequently mention it when people ask me why I chose to become a geriatrician. By the time I finished medical school, I had no doubt that I wanted to become a geriatrician and continued to work toward that goal during my internal medicine primary care residency training at the University of Pennsylvania and then geriatrics fellowship at Yale, where I stayed for an extra year of advanced fellowship training in medical education. I am forever grateful to PGSHC for introducing me to the field of geriatrics; for me, this was truly a life-changing experience. (2007 alumna)
A large part of the reason I came to UPHCSA was my desire to have a more immersive experience with healthcare and college life than I would be able to have at school, but I never thought that I would be making friends that transformed my life, even if it was only for the summer. my learning experience broadened my perspectives on the scope of healthcare systems to an unprecedented extent. I was introduced to a plethora of different careers, some that I had not even known existed before, and even beyond that I learned about the issues affecting people and communities around the world. The lessons turned out to be more than just learning about how the human body works, or what branches there are in psychiatry, or how much money a neurosurgeon makes – though there was a lot of that too. The lessons were about the life a doctor would lead, from the work in undergrad to the opportunities of med school all the way to the job. (2022 alumnus)