The OSU mentors are all in their second year of medical school and required to complete a community health education project. They chose SHS because Rocking Horse Community Health Center has a location at the high school.
“We think the school-based health center model is really unique,” said OSU mentor Emily Stanciu. “This gives us a chance to help a community where they may not have as many resources as in Columbus.”
All the OSU students are the first in their families to attend medical school. They hope to guide high schoolers who may be the first in their families to pursue post-secondary education, even if medical school is not a goal.
“When I was in high school, I didn’t know about all the career options in health care,” said OSU student Maya Neidhart. “I hope students leave this program knowing there are so many options that don’t involve going to school for a million years or working with patients directly, that it really is a stable field and good career option.”
Fellow med student Nikita Nel emphasized this as a goal of the Medical Mentorship program.
“We want to empower students to know they can obtain a health care career, as long as they have the interest, no matter where they’re from,” Nel said.
The OSU students have developed a curriculum that includes the college application process, financial aid resources, extracurriculars to take in high school and college, and sessions teaching such skills as CPR and First Aid, said Delaney Kesterson, another mentor.
The mentors will be guided by the high school students’ interests. For example, the November session will be a panel of health care professionals, with participants determined by the fields SHS students want to discover.
“We have flexibility in giving students options between a multitude of subjects they’d like us to cover so we can tailor the experience to them,” Kesterson said.
OSU mentors Anna Ryder and Stanciu visited SHS in late August to staff a table promoting the new program. Students’ interests range from social work to nursing and from sports medicine to psychiatry.
“The students asked so many questions about what is entailed in the program and getting into health care,” Ryder said. “We decided to take all the students who signed up.”
Planning for the Medical Mentorship program began just this past June, said Anita Biles, SHS community outreach coordinator.
“This will help students ID a career path, regardless of what that looks like,” Biles said. “We have such a need for health care providers in the community. This helps us grow our own by teaching students where and how to access everything that can be beneficial to their success.”
According to the Clark County Combined Health District’s 2025 Community Health Assessment, the county has higher patient-to-provider ratios than the rest of Ohio and the United States in dental, primary care and mental health providers, indicating a need for more healthcare professionals in those fields in particular.
The Medical Mentorship program joins another new opportunity at the high school: two State Tested Nursing Aide (STNA) courses. Both STNA and the mentorship program support the district’s Healthcare Career Pathway.
The OSU students envision the mentorship program as ongoing.
“One of our goals is to pass this on to another group of med students,” Kesterson said. “We hope this program has a longevity for future students.”
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