Welcome
To
STEP-uHP!
Service-Learning | Training | Enrichment Programs
Closing Opportunity Gaps In Health Careers
STEP-uHP is a career coaching program for students seeking socioeconomically and professionally rewarding service-learning and mentoring.
Why We STEP-uHP: Purpose
Closing Opportunity Gaps In Healthcare Careers
STEP-uHP (Service-learning, Training, and Enrichment Programs for the underrepresented in Health Professions) is a workforce development program designed to close opportunity gaps that force disadvantaged students out of health career paths.
Many students from low-income, first-generation, and/or underrepresented backgrounds aspire to pursue careers in medicine, but they do not have equitable access to socioeconomic and professional capital to sustain their career dreams. Less than 10% of matriculating medical students come from low-income backgrounds, compared to counterparts from the highest US household income quintiles who comprise more than 75% (7 out of 10) of every class, since 1988 . To resolve this stagnancy, we are designing inclusive and equitable strategies to recruit and nurturing a more robust healthcare workforce to serve our communities.
Vision: to create viable, simple and integrated opportunities that sustain health career aspirations for an inclusive and diverse healthcare workforce.
Mission: we recruit, train, and coach disadvantaged and underrepresented students into skill-building internships and champion their professional school candidacy.
We leverage resources from community partners and existing programs to champion a shared mission to close opportunity gaps, sustain early career aspirations, and promote parity in health and wellness.
Community Partnerships: Together with New Haven Promise, a local non-profit that provides scholarships to disadvantaged students in the public school system, we have recruited our pioneer cohort including 10 college students who will be training for healthcare internships as part of a 2-year pilot (2022 -2024) in New Haven, CT.
Training and mentoring: We have designed a service-learning and mentoring model, which will afford students early exposure, transferable skills, and access to role models who are invested in their careers. We have trained 3 college students and 2 high school students in 2022, with our first cohort starting in Summer 2023.
Sustainable Funding: the STEP-uHP team just won a $20,000 grant from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), ABIM Foundation, the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM), the American College of Physicians (ACP), and Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. This grant will support our pilot (July 2022 - June 2024).
Partner service users: physician practices, hospitals, healthcare leaders can partner with us to place trained STEP-uHP Scholars (scribes).
Contact us at contact@stepuhp.info or complete this form for more information and questions about your potential support in this cause.
Our Story
STEP-uHP was envisioned in 2020 by Dr. George Agyapong, a first-generation, immigrant, low-income student (FGLI) who took a 7-year detour into Harvard Medical School. Dr. Agyapong juggled multiple jobs at 7-Eleven, the US Army Reserves as a Combat Medic, graduate school and research internships. Together in our shared stories, we have built a formidable founding team and an advisory board of medical educators and mentors at Yale University with expertise in community engagement, diversity and inclusion, and business administration.
61%
Higher chance for medical scribes
Service-learning gigs like medical scribing offers students direct experience in healthcare, access to potential mentors and sustain their aspirations. STEP-uHP offers longitudinal, service-learning (such as scribing) and integrated coaching. We invite institutional partners to align their scribe service needs with our equity-informed coaching model.
Our Solution
Imagine healthcare workforce equitably designed to tackle critical bottlenecks - an upstream, inclusive and rewarding ecosystem for all stakeholders.
STEP-uHP enables students from disadvantaged backgrounds to enter health careers through service-learning and career coaching into medical/health profession school.
Scholars are trained to standard as medical scribes and offered paid internships with partner hospitals and physicians. These service-partners will contribute into funds that provide competitive stipends and tailored career coaching for our scholars.
The current medical scribe industry/model has no impetus to address disparities in the premed applicant pool. So we STEP-uHP to close the disparities that exist in this status quo.
Service-Learning Opportunities
Recruit. Train. Nurture Aspirations.
Our first focus area is to recruit and train URM students as medical scribes to sustain their aspirations in health careers. Scribes are 61% more likely to gain admission into medical school, because scribing offers students direct experiences in healthcare, to meet potential mentors and sustain their aspirations.
We have designed a hybrid scribe training and coaching curriculum. With a $1,500 pilot grant, we currently support two students who are completing the training and mentoring curriculum. These Scholars will be ready for paid internships in Summer 2022.
Training & Enrichment
Build. Mentor. Reward parity.
STEP-uHP scholars will be trained as medical scribes and offered paid internships with partner hospitals and physician groups, who will contribute service fees into funds that support competitive stipends and tailored mentoring for our scholars.
In our early pilot phase now, seeking funding to recruit and support up to 20 additional students in an expanded pilot in Summer 2022.
Nurturing partnerships
Institutions. Community. Generations.
STEP-uHP has stakeholders in the early phase of this vision, including several faculty members from the Yale Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency Program and the Yale Department of Internal Medicine where some of our founding team serve.
Our community partners include the New Haven Promise, a local non-profit that provides scholarships to disadvantaged students in the public school system, where we can recruit and mentor cohorts of students into STEP-uHP.
Our Team
Get to Know Us
George Agyapong, MD, MS
A first-generation college-grad and doctor, George took a 7-year detour to serve in the US Army Reserves and held overnight jobs as a security officer to make ends meet. He earned a Master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell (MS, Biotechnology) while taking undergraduate premed coursework (evening/summer school). He persisted and customized his path into Harvard Medical School to became a doctor, 12 years after graduating college!
Inspired by mentors and opportunities that nurtured his dreams, George rallied our founding team behind a shared vision - to create viable and rewarding service-learning and coaching opportunities for disadvantaged students. Connect with George for mentoring or funding opportunities.
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New Haven, CT