Educational Pipeline Program

The Educational Pipeline Program (EPP) is a partnership between the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) and the Netter Center that works closely with the School of Veterinary Medicine, and the Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management (LSM) in the School of Arts and Sciences.The program offers year-round health careers activities for students in grades 9-12 from local West Philadelphia high schools, specifically from the University-Assisted Community Schools of the Netter Center (Paul Robeson High School, West Philadelphia High School, William L. Sayre High School, and Mastery Charter School - Shoemaker Campus).  Penn students and faculty provide mentorship and education for high school students while exposing them to a variety of careers in medicine, public health, research, business management, and other healthcare-adjacent fields. The program is committed to working with students who attend public schools in the neighborhoods of West Philadelphia that surround the university. Fall programming is integrated into the high school science curriculum during the school day, and the spring component operates at the Medical School and the Veterinary School as an afterschool program. The Center for Public Health (CPH), a center within the Perelman School of Medicine which serves the larger university community, offers a summer program that engages young people in youth-driven public health research. 

Mission Statement

The mission of the Educational Pipeline Program is to encourage high school students from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine to aspire to careers in healthcare or the medical sciences.

The Netter Center for Community Partnerships, the Perelman School of Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Public Health, and Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management collaborate to provide mentorship and education at all levels:

• High school students are taught by undergraduates and graduate students
• Undergraduates learn from graduate students
• Graduate students are guided by faculty

The Pipeline Program allows college students, medical trainees, physicians-in-training, and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania to contribute meaningfully to our local community while simultaneously advancing teaching, learning, and research at Penn.

Goals

1. Foster mentorship across multiple tiers.
2. Expose high school students to a variety of careers in healthcare and medicine that require different levels of training and preparation.
3. Connect high school students with meaningful internships and pathways to post-graduation success.
4. Help medical students and other Penn students and faculty learn to communicate effectively about medical problems in ways that the public is able to understand.
5. Engage learners and facilitators of all ages in an exploration of health issues that affect the local community.

Academic Year Program

Educational Pipeline

The fall semester has three components: 1) High school students participate in an introductory medical science curriculum taught by University of Pennsylvania undergraduates at the partner schools; 2) Penn students host once a week mentorship sessions to help high school students think about college and career choices; 3) Penn students and high school students have the opportunity to attend four career exposure sessions hosted by partners across Penn Medicine and the wider university community. In the late fall, teachers at each school select students for the spring semester program based on the students’ interest and level of engagement.

In the spring semester, the Netter Center helps these students travel to the University after school for 90-minute in-depth lessons. These interactive lessons allow students to experience the world of medicine and the life sciences through conducting experiments, performing dissections, examining specimens, and going on a variety of field trips. Topics in human and animal health are covered. Students also learn about health issues that affect their own lives and the communities they belong to. Medical students and veterinary students teach these lessons. This portion of the program occurs one afternoon per week for 13 weeks.

Career Day is held midway through the spring semester and exposes students to a variety of careers in medicine and health care, as well as the summer programs available to them at Penn. The Program culminates with a final presentation. Undergraduate and graduate students help the high school students prepare by working in small groups to review medical literature, perform internet searches, prepare a slide presentation, and practice public speaking skills. Families of the high school students are invited to watch their students give presentations on their selected topic.

Throughout the academic year, Pipeline’s design team- which consists of teachers from the partner high schools, Netter Center staff, and Penn faculty- advise graduate student coordinators and undergraduate teaching assistants while supporting program implementation and evaluation.

Life Sciences & Management (LSM) Track of Educational Pipeline

The LSM track expands the scope of Pipeline and gives high school students a window into the world of pharmaceutical development and the commercialization of medical technologies. High school students in 11th and 12th grade can opt in to this track of the program.

This program focus is facilitated by undergraduates in the LSM program at Penn. The curriculum focuses on the business and ethics of developing life-saving drugs and medical technologies. Sessions involve participants in debates, experiments, and tours of local biotech companies, laboratories, and start-ups. The final project revolves around the creation of a market scan or business plan for a theoretical innovative technology.

Summer Program

Pipeline Plus is a six-week summer internship program partially funded by JEVS’ summer WorkReady program. Pipeline Plus is supervised by Netter Center staff and taught by MPH students from Penn's Center for Public Health (CPH), Penn undergraduates, and Pipeline Plus alumni. High school students who participate in the spring semester may enroll in the summer program.

Pipeline Plus is built around a core Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Framework. During the first two weeks of the program, students meet with public health professionals and learn about different health issues that affect the local community. Speakers explain how they measure and define community-health problems, as well as the tools they use to facilitate solutions. Core community health interventions that are covered in the program draw from such focus areas as violence prevention, substance abuse treatment and prevention, environmental health, and mental health and chronic disease prevention. 

Over the last four weeks of the program, the young people choose their own health problems of interest and then develop a research and action plan to investigate the problem in the community and propose solutions. Facilitators help the youth develop social science research skills to conduct original community-based research. The program culminates with a community forum where the youth share their research findings.

Program History

In 1998, Karen Hamilton, PhD, created the Educational Pipeline Program in the Perelman School of Medicine as part of Project 3000 by 2000: an ambitious program launched by the Association of American Medical Colleges to increase the matriculation of underrepresented people of color in medical school to a total of 3000 students by the year 2000.

The Pipeline Program initially served high school students from African American, Hispanic, and financially-disadvantaged backgrounds from Thomas A. Edison and Overbrook High Schools. In 2003, the Pipeline Program combined forces with the Netter Center for Community Partnerships to form a strong and enduring relationship with Sayre High School. In 2014, the Netter Center began to recruit West Philadelphia High School students to the program. In 2016, the Netter Center partnered with Mastery Charter School - Shoemaker Campus, and in 2019, with Paul Robeson High School. The program currently works with students from Sayre, West Philadelphia, Mastery-Shoemaker, and Robeson High Schools.

When the Pipeline Program began, the curriculum was focused on neuroscience. Over the years other subjects were added: infectious diseases, cardiology, and gastroenterology. Today, the Pipeline Program is a comprehensive program that teaches students about neurology in 10th grade, cardiology in 11th grade, and gastroenterology in 12th grade. In 2015, the School of Veterinary Medicine joined the program and developed its own curriculum which currently serves as an introduction to human and animal health in the 9th grade. In 2021, the Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management (LSM) joined the program and developed an LSM curriculum for 11th grade and 12th grade students.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Samuel A. Funt, MD, C’05 and Mia Belldegrun Funt, C’05 as the first-ever donors to the Educational Pipeline Program. Mrs. Funt was a volunteer at Sayre High School as an undergraduate and is now on the board of Technoserve and President and Co-Founder of ByHeart, a fully integrated baby nutrition company dedicated to translating leading nutrition science into products that set the best foundation for babies’ health. Dr. Funt is an oncologist and cancer researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; he was a UPENN Pipeline participant as a sophomore undergraduate and then went on to co-found the Educational Pipeline Program at Emory University as a medical student.

We also gratefully acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Ron Belldegrun, C’08 and Karrie Belldegrun, whose generous support created a Pipeline track for Life Science and Management. This new track for 11th–12th grade students, in collaboration with the Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management, launched in fall 2021.

Please contact Hakiem Ellison, hellison@sas.upenn.edu,  Health Careers Coordinator, with any questions.

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