Medicina Comunitária e Educação em Saúde

Abstrato

Pipeline Efforts with a Freirean Twist: The Juntos Health Disparities Research Internship

Maria Alonso Luaces, Natalia Suarez, Octavio Estrella, Megha Ramaswamy, Won Choi and Ana-Paula Cupertino

Increasing workforce diversity is essential to improving the health outcomes for minority populations, particularly Latinos. This paper describes an innovative 6-week health disparities internship program for underrepresented precollege and college students aimed at empowering students to become health science researchers focused on issues that continue to affect minority communities. Our program embraces the educational philosophy developed by Paulo Freire, which supports the development of critical awareness, critical thinking, and reflection. In this manner, this internship program shifts the paradigm away from traditional approaches focused solely on knowledge remediation. Program participants became conscious of their realities while they grew to envision themselves as agents of change capable of transforming their communities.