After lunch one sunny Wednesday afternoon, first-graders at Adams Elementary School could barely contain their excitement at the opportunity to touch, smell and inspect a cow’s eyeball.
The dissection lesson was part of the mini-medicine course led by School of Medicine students. The pilot program, developed by the Center for Health Policy, was designed to introduce minority grade-school students to medicine and spark their interest in health-care professions.
About 30 School of Medicine students taught kindergarteners, first-graders and second-graders at Adams School, in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood, about the senses, dissection, the skeletal system and the nervous system.
All of the lessons, developed with the St. Louis Science Center, involved demonstrations by the medical students and hands-on activities that allowed all children to participate.
In the nervous system lesson, the children used rubber hammers to test their reflexes and bowls of cold and warm water to learn about thermoregulation. In the dissection lesson, they learned about the anatomy of the eye.
The program is based on research that shows that interest in medicine by minorities starts dropping off in third grade.
Overseeing the program as director of the Center for Health Policy was William A. Peck, M.D., the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Medicine and former executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine and former president of Washington University Medical Center, who is looking to expand the program.
“The Center for Health Policy is privileged to sponsor this innovative, unique approach to beginning the process of stimulating interest in future health professions and careers among elementary school children,” Peck said. “It is our hope that this early and effective introduction will positively impact career choices and improve literacy in the future.”
Craig Press, a student in the M.D./Ph.D. program, and Debbie Chase, a senior consultant in the Center for Health Policy, developed the idea for the mini-medicine course after meeting at a lecture by Will Ross, M.D., associate dean for diversity and director of the Office of Diversity, about inequality in health care in the United States for minorities and the lack of minority doctors. Press and Chase worked with the Science Center on the curriculum and got the program rolling at Adams.
While there are other programs that pair medical students with middle-school students, Press said he believes this is the only education program in which medical students get to work with early elementary children in minority neighborhoods.
“The younger kids haven’t been exposed to some of these things, so you see the wonder in their eyes when you do something ‘Mr. Wizard-like,'” Press said. “We want them to make the connection between Mr. Wizard and a doctor, so hopefully they’ll see medicine as a career.”
Press said the experience reinforced the idea behind the effort — to make a long-term impression on children with a short-term exposure to careers in health care, including medicine, occupational therapy and physical therapy.
“We don’t need to be there every day to make them want to be doctors,” he said. “Small doses of medical students can pique their interest enough.”
Saroj Fleming, a first-year medical student who was a teacher in the program, said she enjoyed the children’s enthusiasm and inquisitiveness and their desire to learn more about medicine and science.
“After the eye presentation, a little girl asked if we could bring some bones to show them next time,” Fleming said. “I hope that we’ve gotten the kids to think about areas in medicine or science that they’d like to know more about.”
While the program requires minimal time commitments from medical students, it has far-reaching goals.
“In the short term, we’d like to show them that these career options are possible and available to them in their own community,” Fleming said. “In the long term, we would love to inspire some of the children to enter science or medicine as a career.”
In addition to giving elementary students what may be their first taste of a career in medicine, the program is also a way for medical students to give back to the community in which they live.
“It’s important for the School of Medicine to give back,” Press said. “With just four hours a year, we can have a profound impact.”
In the long term, Press said he would like to see the program start with children in kindergarten and continue with them through middle school, high school, college and on to medical school.
“All along the way the program would support the child who has the ability and expresses the desire for a career in medicine,” Press said. “The medical school can help them realize the opportunity is there and make it happen.”
Press and Chase plan to continue the program in the next school year and possibly offer it to more grade levels. They would also like to get more minority medical students involved so the children can culturally identify with the medical students, Press said.
Peck acknowledged that the success of such a program is dependent on the individuals involved, including Adams Principal Jeanetta Stegall, former Principal Sharonica Hardin, the Adams School teachers and students, Ross, Press, medical students and Chase.