As the health care industry faces a growing shortage of health care workers, Spelman College and Advocate Health are collaborating to introduce more students to a range of critical health care careers.
Over the past two years, Spelman has teamed up with
Advocate Health, the nation’s third-largest nonprofit health system, to connect students who aspire to work in medicine with mentorship and career discernment opportunities.
The partnership is aligned with Spelman’s commitment to achieving health equity in the face of national and international societal changes and Advocate Health’s pledge to build a next-generation workforce. The Health Careers Mentor Program aims to build a more robust workforce pipeline to better serve the varied and complex needs of its nearly six million patients.
“We are an institution focused on developing 21
st century leaders in healthcare,” said Dr. Rosalind Gregory-Bass, associate professor and director of the health careers program at Spelman. “Our partnership with Advocate Health allows us to meet this goal and align with an organization that is also passionate about culturally competent, data-driven care for some of the nation's most underserved populations.”
In March, a group of eight Spelman students pursuing health science degrees, with medical and nursing school aspirations, participated in an immersion day at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago. Students took part in hands-on patient care simulations and gained career advice from hospital, physician and nurse leaders representing a range of operational and clinical disciplines.
“We are proud to partner with Spelman College and build on its legacy of empowering future African American leaders, midwives, advanced clinicians and nurses,” said Dayla Randolph, senior vice president of talent and culture at Advocate Health. “This program is a strategic investment in the next generation of talent and leadership that will transform the quality and accessibility of care for our patients and communities.”
Among the mentorship program’s notable successes:
- 100% of first-year mentees are on target to graduate in May 2024.
- 100% of those mentees completed research projects.
- 60% of those mentees have been accepted into early assurance/acceptance programs at the nation’s top medical and nursing schools.
- One mentee completed a summer internship at Advocate Health’s Midwest research institute.
Additionally, Advocate Health mentors visit Spelman’s campus throughout the academic year to meet with mentees and participate in Spelman’s health fair, Georgia Dwelle Networking Reception and Health Professions Conference, as well as the Atlanta University Center Health Professions Recruitment Fair.
About Spelman College
Founded in 1881, Spelman College is a leading liberal arts college widely recognized as the global leader in the education of women of African descent. Located in Atlanta, the College’s picturesque campus is home to 2,300 students. Spelman is the country's leading producer of Black women who complete Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The College’s status is confirmed by the U.S. News & World Report
, which ranked Spelman No. 39 among all liberal arts colleges, No. 19 for undergraduate teaching, No. 2 for social mobility among liberal arts colleges, and No. 1 for the 17th year among historically Black colleges and universities. Recent initiatives include a designation by the Department of Defense as a Center of Excellence for Minority Women in STEM, a Gender and Sexuality Studies Institute, the first endowed queer studies chair at an HBCU and a program to increase the number of Black women Ph.D.s in economics. New majors and minors have been added, including documentary filmmaking and photography, data science, refugee studies and gaming. Collaborations have been also established with MIT’s Media Lab, the Broad Institute and the Army Research Lab for artificial intelligence and machine learning, among others.
Outstanding alumnae include Children’s Defense Fund founder
Marian Wright Edelman, former Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO
Rosalind Brewer, political leader
Stacey Abrams, Federal Reserve Governor
Lisa D. Cook, former Acting Surgeon General and Spelman’s first alumna president
Audrey Forbes Manley, Harvard University professor and former Dean
Evelynn Hammonds, actress and producer
Latanya Richardson Jackson, global bioinformatics geneticist
Janina Jeff and authors
Pearl Cleage and
Tayari Jones.
To learn more, please visit
spelman.edu and @spelmancollege on social media.
About Advocate Health
Advocate Health is the third-largest nonprofit, integrated health system in the United States, created from the combination of Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health. Providing care under the names Advocate Health Care in Illinois; Atrium Health in the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama; and Aurora Health Care in Wisconsin, Advocate Health is a national leader in clinical innovation, health outcomes, consumer experience and value-based care. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Advocate Health services nearly 6 million patients and is engaged in hundreds of clinical trials and research studies, with
Wake Forest University School of Medicine serving as the academic core of the enterprise. It is nationally recognized for its expertise in cardiology, neurosciences, oncology, pediatrics and rehabilitation, as well as organ transplants, burn treatments and specialized musculoskeletal programs. Advocate Health employs nearly 155,000 team members across 68 hospitals and over 1,000 care locations, and offers one of the nation’s largest graduate medical education programs with over 2,000 residents and fellows across more than 200 programs. Committed to providing equitable care for all, Advocate Health provides $5.9 billion in annual community benefits.
