Health Professions Recruitment Exposure Program (High School)

The Health Professions Recruitment Exposure Program (HPREP) is a nation-wide high school science enrichment program created to address poor health outcomes in disadvantaged communities by increasing minority representation in health professions. HPREP is a pipeline program under the auspices of the Student National Medical Association and Latino Medical Student Association at Yale. It is a program aimed at exposing students to all aspects of the health professions, including medicine, nursing, and public health. The program aims to provide students with the skills and necessary resources to succeed in the college application process by providing didactic classroom sessions, workshops and one-on-one meetings. By the end of the program, each student will have drafted and edited their first college essay and successfully completed a health-related research project and oral presentation.

Each year, approximately 45-50 students are accepted into the program based on personal merit, interest in medical sciences as well as a demonstrated need for academic support. Counselors from the New Haven Public School system refer potential applicants to our program and HPREP coordinators select the year’s cohort. Volunteers are recruited from the medical school, nursing school, physician assistant school, the school of public health and the graduate school of arts and sciences. This diverse set of volunteers gives students a multi-disciplinary perspective. We aim to introduce students to a variety of careers in healthcare that they may feel empowered to choose career paths where they have been historically underrepresented.