Summer program for high school students targets gender disparities in oncology
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The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School has implemented an outreach program for high school students that aims to address the gender gap in oncology, research and academic leadership.
The Summer Healthcare Experience (SHE) in Oncology, launched in 2019, introduces high school juniors and seniors who identify as female to a variety of oncology-associated career experiences, such as research, clinical care, survivorship and community support.
“Part of the mission of Dell Medical School is to address health care disparities, and [although] this is obviously an important part of most organizations, we are a startup, which has given us an opportunity to discuss disparities more in depth and form a different perspective,” Nick Smith-Stanley, MBA, associate director of administration and strategic planning in the department of oncology at Livestrong Cancer Institutes of The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, said during a presentation at the virtual Association of Community Cancer Centers National Oncology Conference.
“We have examined what health care disparities are, how our community has been impacted and how we can make a difference both in our clinics and out in the community,” he added. “We have a great responsibility to include women and the role they play in cancer research and academics. Our hope is that by talking about the lack of women in oncology that we can begin to have conversations to develop impactful strategies that will address the challenges in oncology.”
For the inaugural year of the SHE program, high school health program teachers in the Austin Independent School District selected eight young women to participate in the 1-week experience.
Most students were from Title 1 schools, including members of families with economically challenged backgrounds. Although this was not an initial goal of the program, it will be a future top priority, according to Smith-Stanley.
Women in oncology often do not receive the tools, mentorship and support needed to maintain a presence throughout the career continuum.
“The decrease in the number of women as we work through the educational pipeline is staggering — from 50% of medical students who are women to the embarrassing 19% of deanships held by women. These numbers are unacceptable,” Smith-Stanley said.
To address this issue, the SHE program aims to help young women:
- demonstrate a general knowledge of cancer biology;
- function as a researcher in the laboratory and/or field setting using basic tools and equipment;
- gain an understanding of how cancer is treated in the clinic, including recent trends in the approach to patient-centered care;
- understand the challenges patients with cancer and their families face after a cancer diagnosis and identify community resources available to help meet their needs;
- practice professionalism in research, clinical and office settings;
- effectively communicate experience through written and oral presentation; and
- develop leadership skills that can be translated to any field.
“Statistics show that women are significantly less likely than men to apply for a position if they do not meet 100% of the requirements for a job posting,” Smith-Stanley said. “We must go out into the community and network with women and get them to apply for positions in medicine.”
Retaining women in the field of oncology is another challenge, Smith-Stanley said.
“It may be easy to hire a diverse team, but we have to provide opportunities for professional development — including bias training, mentorship, peer networking and opportunities to succeed,” he said. “Our plan is to bring the SHE program back in-person during the summer of 2021 as long as it safe to do so with the pending COVID-19 pandemic. We also hope to expand the program from 1 to 2 weeks, include a larger number of students and feature a keynote lecture speaker, as well as take a deeper dive into biomedical research, host a college prep day and provide a post-program internship.”
Smith-Stanley said the program has achieved its main goal — to engage students in a way that is meaningful to them.
“The students who attended were incredible — they asked meaningful and thoughtful questions and were truly interested in learning not only how they can support patients with cancer but how they can pursue a career in oncology,” he said. “It is not enough to just talk about equity and inclusion, we need to have people who are invested in the conversation and the desire to make a difference, and that is exactly what we saw during the inaugural year.”
Looking ahead, Stanley-Smith said organizers hope to expand the program to other institutions nationwide.
“We have developed an exciting partnership that was unfortunately delayed because of COVID-19, but we are excited to revisit that partnership, which will fund the expansion of the program to four other cancer centers,” he said. “The expansion will focus on developing female leaders in oncology, research and academics, as we did here in Austin, but will be flexible to the needs of their specific communities.
“We hope that as the program continues to grow that we will partner with other cancer centers, other medical schools and health care systems to deploy the SHE program to even more areas of the country,” he added.
More information on the program can be found at https://dellmed.utexas.edu/education/academics/programs-for-youth-and-undergrads/summer-healthcare-experience-in-cancer.
For more information:
Nick Smith-Stanley, MBA, can be reached at The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, 1501 Red River St., Austin, TX 78712; email: nstanley@austin.utexas.edu.
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Smith-Stanley N. Closing keynote: Addressing the disparity of women in oncology. Presented at: ACCC National Oncology Conference (virtual); Sept. 14-18, 2020.
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