High schoolers attend med school program

A "graduation ceremony" was held Thursday at the new Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine for 46 students, even though they haven't yet applied to undergraduate school.

It may all sound backward, but to the region's newest medical school, it makes perfect sense.

The youngsters are all high school students -- many from the Uniondale school district and others in central Nassau -- who took part for the last month in the Hofstra Medical Scholars Pipeline Program. The program takes academically gifted students from educationally or economically disadvantaged environments and exposes them to the health care field through lectures and observation of such things as lab work. The hope, said the medical school's associate dean of administration, June Scarlett, is that they enter the field.

"As part of our recruitment of a diverse student body, we realize there aren't enough minorities entering medical school," Scarlett said. "We're trying to go a little further back [to the high schools] to identify academically-talented students" for the program.

The program is a plus for Long Island, where business and political leaders are looking to the booming health care field as a way to grow the local economy and provide well-paying jobs for young people who may otherwise leave the region.

Pipeline, run by the Hofstra School of Medicine, is a five-year program that started last year with 22 students. This year, there were 24 students. The students, chosen on the basis of their grades, interest in the subject and character, are exposed to clinical, social and political issues facing the industry.

Jada Grace, 16, wants to be a sports physical therapist for a National Basketball Association team. The program, Grace said, "opened our eyes to things we never heard of before. There is more to it than being a family doctor. You could work in administration, figuring out how money is spent."

Doyin Aveyeye-Akintobi, also 16, looks forward to becoming a neurosurgeon. "That takes 15 years" of study, he noted. "I'm still very young. I'm good at time management."

Lenny Toussaint, 15, like the two others a student at Uniondale high school, said if there is one thing he learned at Pipeline, it's that "it's not all about the money. It's if you love what you're doing."