Survey: Program effectively recruits female students into orthopedic career pipeline
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TAMPA, Fla. — About 90% of 9,207 high school students who participated in the Perry Outreach Program between 2009 and summer 2021 matriculated into college STEM majors, a presenter at the Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting said.
The purpose of the Perry Outreach Program (POP) is to recruit female students aged 13 years and older into college engineering and other types of academic programs that will prepare them for medical careers in orthopedics, Laurie Meszaros Dearolf, PhD, of The Perry Initiative organization in Newark, Delaware, said.
Meszaros Dearolf presented results of an online survey conducted summer 2021 of POP alumni, which was designed to assess the program’s effectiveness.
According to the abstract, 1,115 completed surveys were analyzed. The majority (75%) were submitted by POP alumni who completed the program between 2017 and 2021.
According to the abstract, survey results showed 29.8% of respondents were still in high school. Of these, 98.8% planned to enroll in 4-year colleges or universities. In addition, 87.2% of high-school age respondents said they intend to major in STEM.
These results were consistent with the results of the POP census results from 2012 and 2016, Meszaros Dearolf said.
Biology and biosciences were identified by 83.2% of the would-be STEM majors as their area of focus, the results showed.
“This year’s census clearly shows that POP alumni are choosing to enter the orthopedics career pipeline as engineers/basic scientists and as clinicians,” Meszaros Dearolf said.
Among the 51.6% of respondents in college, the survey results showed 90% were in STEM majors, with 60% studying biosciences and 16.4% studying engineering.
Meszaros Dearolf, who presented many more detailed results from the survey, said, “Going back to our research question of whether this program is having an impact on the orthopedics pipeline, the answer is clearly yes. Considering first the engineering pathway, only 5% of STEM-applied women pursue engineering majors in college, and the POP alumni are entering engineering programs at over three times that rate.”
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Meszaros Dearolf L, et al. Paper 122. Presented at: Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting; Feb. 4-8, 2022; Tampa, Fla.
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