Education First: Educación Primero, the brainchild of the Chicano/Latino Medical Students Association, mentors fifth graders interested in science and medicine.
To a little kid, no one's word quite carries the same weight as a big brother's or sister's.
At the Keck School of Medicine, several medical students have decided to take on that mentoring role.
Students in the Chicano/Latino Medical Students Association, or CMSA, recently adopted a group of local fifth graders from Eastman Avenue Elementary School who are interested in science and medicine. The idea, according to the medical students, is to keep kids interested in the sciences and give them support and encouragement as they progress through school.
Called Educación Primero-meaning "education first" in Spanish-the program was the brainchild of Keck School third-year student and CMSA member Nicolas Campero, says Kevin Marmolejo, a second-year medical student involved in the project.
"The school itself identified 39 kids who were really interested in medicine or science," Marmolejo explains. "And we went from there."
Carlos Venegas, coordinator of minority outreach programs at the Keck School, went with Marmolejo and several other medical students to Eastman to introduce themselves to staff members, parents and students. The K-5 school, located on Olympic Boulevard about five miles south of the Health Sciences Campus, is bursting with an enrollment of about 1,450 students- more than 99 percent of them Latino.
"The kids and their parents were really excited," Marmolejo says. "They had lots of questions."
The CMSA students kicked off Educación Primero by organizing a visit to the Health Sciences Campus. They bused the children in for an all-day field trip, complete with lunch and tour of the campus. About 25 CMSA students hosted the children.
"We walked them into Mayer Auditorium, and they were amazed at how huge it was," Marmolejo says. "We showed them the bookstore, the School of Pharmacy and medical student MDLs," or multidisciplinary labs.
And, to pique the fifth-graders' interest, the medical students showed them how to use microscopes and stethoscopes.
The medical students plan to teach the children about the cardiovascular system. They plan to dissect pig hearts, to better explain the arteries of the heart and cardiovascular diseases.
The program is consistent with the aims of the CMSA, which seeks to improve health care delivery to Chicano and Latino communities. The group offers peer support for students at the Keck School, and also runs events for undergraduate and high school students to encourage them to enter medical fields.
The ambitious part about the group's Educación Primero project, Marmolejo adds, is that the CMSA students plan to continue mentoring the children through their teenage years as they go through high school. At that stage, Keck School students will help the teen-agers understand the requirements for medical school and other health-related academic programs, and help them prepare for college.
"We are really going to follow them and support them," he says, even as the Keck School students graduate and new students come in to take their place. "We really want to guide these kids."