Preparing local teens for healthcare careers

Greeting visitors, bringing flowers to patients, delivering lab specimens, and working in the Emergency department are just a few of the tasks that keep Jauregui’s Saturday afternoons interesting.

“The hospital helps so many people, so their need for help is big too. It feels good because every day they tell me how they appreciate how much I help the staff and patients,” Jauregui said as she cheerfully recalled how much she enjoys the human interaction that comes along with volunteering. “The patients and staff are the sweetest people. They are always so supportive and kind. The patients love to have conversations, which is nice.”

Similar anecdotes are shared by the other 24 service learners in Montage Health Foundation’s new Healthcare Careers Academy, a program that is helping local teenagers explore a diverse array of healthcare careers by providing Monterey County youth with volunteer opportunities in tandem with hands-on learning.

The service learners in the academy commit to a minimum of one 2.5-hour volunteer shift per week, plus recurring sessions where they hear from industry professionals including doctors, therapists, and administrators. They receive in-person training, gaining experience in different departments including the Comprehensive Cancer Center, Radiology, and Laboratory Services. Collectively, the cohort has served more than 3,000 volunteer hours since the program launched in September.

“The Healthcare Careers Academy was born from a strong desire among local teenagers to do something to help their community during the pandemic. We received countless inquiries from young people asking how they can help, how they can make a difference. It became very apparent that we needed a program to harness this desire among youth to help their community,” said Michele Melicia Young, Director, Montage Health Foundation.

Recognizing this need, the academy was created by Luke Dilger, a former teacher and current Service-Learning Director for Montage Health Foundation’s Auxiliary. The first cohort began in June of last year and marked the beginning of the program’s first two-month summer intensive program, giving students the opportunity to volunteer for the foundation’s different programs and receive guidance and mentorship from healthcare industry professionals.

Students from the summer intensive cohort were then given the opportunity to participate in the academy’s first year-long cohort which runs through May.

“We wanted to take the program beyond just volunteering and community service. We wanted to turn this program into an opportunity to gain real-world experience in the healthcare field. It is truly an investment in our community; if we can foster a passion for healthcare careers among local youth, then the hope is that they go to college, get their education, and come back to serve the communities they are from,” said Young.

Preparing for college

Getting these service learners into college-level healthcare programs is one of the main goals of the academy. High school seniors who reach 100 volunteer hours for the year are automatically eligible for a scholarship from Montage Health Foundation Auxiliary. This year, three seniors hit that benchmark and will be awarded a scholarship for their college freshman year.

The academy features panels from industry professionals who talk about their experiences getting into healthcare and what their educational paths into the industry looked like. “We had a student from CSUMB come visit us who was going to be a radiology tech. They gave us tips about what to expect, and how college is hard but it is worth every second,” said Jauregui, who hopes to one day attend the nursing program at UCLA or UC San Diego.

Throughout the year-long program, local healthcare experts and professionals meet with the service learners to answer their questions, give them tips for getting into college, share why they chose their career paths, and tell them what to expect academically. The academy also provides service learners with letters of recommendation and helps them secure healthcare internships. Combine all this with the many volunteer hours that each service learner accumulates, and their college applications begin to stand out among their peers.

An investment in local healthcare

The academy is a community investment that Montage Health believes will pay dividends in the future. The program is entirely funded by Montage Health Foundation and is completely free for participants. The goal is to inspire youth to work in healthcare, prepare them for those careers, help them get an education, and ultimately have them return to the community as healthcare professionals.

“We are really inspiring our own through this program,” Young said. “We are investing in these youth and their futures, which will in turn be massively beneficial to our Monterey County healthcare industry down the road.”

With a healthcare worker shortage across the country including right here in Monterey County, programs like the academy are imperative to the long-term vitality of the local healthcare industry.

“After college, I want to come back here to the hospital. I want to come back to the Monterey area and work here because I really do love the community. I really do love the people and the patients and the staff and just everything about it,” Jauregui said. “If people out there want an opportunity in the healthcare field, they really should volunteer. It has been an amazing experience getting to learn about not only the hospital and its people, but also about myself. It has been an amazing journey.”