PITTSBURG, Kansas — A chorus of tiny “ewwws” echoes down a hallway at the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas’ John U. Parolo Education center.
Donned in safety goggles, disposable gloves and miniature, white lab coats, about a dozen kids crowd around tables in a classroom.
“It smells disgusting,” a kid declares. “It’s so scary!” said another.
At the center of the tables lies the source of their disgust: dead frogs. The students are learning about anatomy by watching frog dissections.
The amphibian anatomy isn’t just for fun. These kids are participating in a spring break camp aimed at introducing them to careers in health care in a memorable way. Hopefully one day, these frog memories might cause the children to consider careers in health care. The organizers view it as a way to help solve a long-term problem: shortages in the medical workforce.
“We are about growing the next generation of health care professionals right here at home, where kids can see themselves in these roles and it doesn’t feel so foreign,” Leah Gagnon said.
Gagnon is the director for Inspire Health Foundation, a subsidiary of the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas that focuses on education.
Rural Kansas facilities, like many across rural America, struggle to fill positions for primary care or specialty doctors. Initiatives like this camp are trying to solve that by building a pipeline for rural kids to careers in rural health.
Camps to careers
The spring break camps are for kids kindergarten through sixth grade. Gagnon said they focus on introducing children to careers in mental health, dental hygiene, primary care, pharmacy and sports medicine — jobs that can be hard to fill in rural communities.
The kids do fun activities, like polishing teeth with a dental hygienist, going for a hike and practicing a grounding exercise with a behavioral health specialist, playing “candy or medicine” with pharmacists and taking ultrasounds with a sports medicine physician.
Gagnon said the goal is to have fun connecting kids to adults, but also show the children the types of health care jobs that exist in their community. These are jobs they otherwise might not be aware of, and the knowledge can hopefully inspire them to find a career in the medical field later in life.
Much of southeast Kansas is rural. Gagnon said residents have a hard time accessing specialists. For example, the area doesn’t have a urologist.
“You talk to any families in our communities and they’re all going to tell you how often, for specialty services, they’re going to an urban community to receive those services,” she said.
ANOTHER ISSUE is that many of the physicians in their area are at or above retirement age and not enough students are going to medical school to take their place.
Jason Wesco is president and chief strategy officer for the health center. He said much of southeast Kansas is impoverished, and kids often don’t know they have health care options for a career.
