Ask a five-year-old what they want to be when they grow up and you’ll get all the standard answers—astronaut, ballet dancer, superhero.  But for Seciah Michelle Aquino, as a five-year-old girl growing up in Guatemala City, her answer was quite certain. 

“That’s when I made up my mind. I wanted to be a dentist,” she says.

Eleven years later, Aquino, now a sophomore at Nathaniel Norbonne Senior High School in Harbor City, hasn’t wavered in her choice of a future profession. In fact, with the help of a unique USC program and mentors at USC School of Dentistry, Aquino is closer to that goal than ever.

This summer, Aquino forwent the traditional summer vacation activities of hanging at the beach and going to the mall to participate in two programs through USCSD. 

In addition to two weeks as a Dental Explorer, Aquino was the first high school student to intern at the school’s Oral Health Center.  For three weeks, Aquino worked beside general practitioners, specialists and dental hygienists, observing surgeries, preparing instrument trays and helping with sterilization.

This unique opportunity was developed by USCSD’s Community Health Programs in partnership with Med-COR, a 36-year-old program through USC that works with disadvantaged, underserved youths who have a dream and a drive to work in the healthcare professions.

The Med-COR program recruits eager middle and high school youths to participate in an intensive curriculum, including weekly tutorials and summer work/study internships in healthcare settings.  For the more than 1,000 students enrolled in the program, Med-COR also offers personal, academic and peer counseling.

John Davis, who founded the program in 1970 to counteract the dismal numbers of African American and Latino students who applied to medical school, says the problem is less about academics, and more about support. 

“Academics isn’t the problem.  The problem is motivation.  Getting them involved and maintaining that interest.  At Med-COR they have hands-on experiences, they have role models, they have peers who have a common interest. That is a tremendous motivator,” he says.

And Med-COR can boast an amazing success rate, with 95 percent of its participants continuing on to college, 67 percent of whom major in one of the health fields—primarily pre-med.

Med-COR students participate in summer internships through King/Drew Hospital and LAC+USC Medical Center. They work in research labs and in healthcare delivery.  “Our students know how to take vital signs, how to make beds occupied and unoccupied, how to read a chart and those kinds of things,” Davis says.

Still, Davis says that Aquino’s experience has been unique.

“This was our first opportunity for Med-COR to work with the School of Dentistry,” Davis says. “Ours is a new, fresh relationship and so far it’s good. This broadens and deepens our students’ experiences.  They are exposed to an area of health care they’ve never been exposed to.  That’s really important.”

It was sheer coincidence that Aquino interned at the Oral Health Center.  After completing her two weeks as a Dental Explorer, Aquino approached Pri De Silva, a program coordinator with USCSD’s Office of Community Health Programs, to ask about other opportunities.  De Silva was working with Oral Health Center Director Sigmund Abelson, associate dean for Intramural Faculty Practices, exploring the possibility of creating a high school internship at the center. 

Abelson was impressed with Aquino’s enthusiasm and glad to help.  He says that though the Oral Health Center is the School of Dentistry’s faculty practice, it is still tied to the school’s mission. “Part of that mission is to treat patients with the highest of ethical standards, and part of it is to play a vital role in exposing young people to the health professions. I hope this is a role we can continue to play,” he says.

Any conversation with Aquino will show she’s a young lady well beyond her years.  At 16, she has the next decade of her life in focus.  She’ll major in dental hygiene, go on to get her doctoral dental degree then into orthodontics or periodontics.  Her dream school is USC, but she’ll settle for UCLA, Berkeley or Harvard, she says, smiling.

Aquino was content to sacrifice her summer vacation and Saturday afternoons in pursuit of this goal.  “It’s a lot of hard work, but I’m planning for the future.  I’ll see the rewards later and then it will be worth it,” she says.

She thanks USCSD and Med-COR because, “If it wasn’t for Pri and Dr. Abelson, if it wasn’t for Med-COR, I wouldn’t have had this wonderful experience.  They’re really helping me open doors,” she says. “I know that one day I’ll walk into the School of Dentistry, and I will be a student there.  Then I’ll say ‘I made my dreams come true.’”

Related Web Sites:

The USC Med-COR program:
http://www.usc.edu/programs/uscmedcor/

The USC Oral Health Center
http://www.usc.edu/hsc/dental/ohc/index.html