Faces for the Future mentors students in health care careers

Outfitted in blue scrubs, Madison Badger knocked on the rooms throughout the maternity ward and offered water to the mothers.

 

At 17, Madison is years younger than the full-time staff at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward. But this is where she feels she belongs. Having successfully battled leukemia in middle school, she wants to become a pediatric oncologist. As the daughter of a single mother who didn't attend college, however, she did not always have a clear path.

 

That's where Faces for the Future comes in.

 

Since 2000, Faces for the Future has let hundreds of high-school students in the East Bay and elsewhere in California test out their interest in health care in hospitals. As volunteers, the students are paired with mentors in the field. They work among patients, take field trips to local colleges, have access to tutoring, and receive lots of personal support from local counselors and teachers. And they earn academic credit along the way.

Plan to buck history

 

Most participants are low-income minorities who end up being the first in their families to go to college - the people who are historically absent from the health workforce. Faces for the Future aims to buck that tradition.

 

"If you are poor and you are uneducated and you don't have a diploma, you are more likely to suffer from health problems or disparities," said Dr. Tomás Magaña, a pediatrician who founded the program at Children's Hospital Oakland but now runs it out of the Public Health Institute, an Oakland nonprofit. "Faces tries to address that by providing opportunities for academic success, professional and personal."

 

In the decade since the inaugural class graduated in 2003, 100 percent of the program's 600 students statewide have finished high school. More than 90 percent have pursued postsecondary education. The program operates in Hayward, San Diego and El Centro (Imperial County), and there are plans to expand to other cities this year.

 

Madison, a senior at San Leandro High School, is grateful to spend time at a hospital in a role other than patient. "Not many people get this opportunity as a high school student," she said.

 

These days, Magaña is a busy physician at a clinic in San Leandro and assistant professor at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland. But he didn't grow up in a family of doctors.

 

Born in Los Angeles, he was raised by a single mother, a non-college-educated clerical worker, who moved the family to San Francisco when he was 13. He won a scholarship to University High School, where adults encouraged him to pursue science. His outlook on the future began to shift.

 

"I had never seen anybody who exemplified the possibility that somebody like me, from where I came from, could go into medicine and be a doctor," he said. "It took me a while to come to the realization that I could be a doctor and wanted to be a doctor."

Teaching other teens

 

Magaña went on to Cornell University, then earned a master's at UC Berkeley and his medical degree from UCSF. During a break after medical school, he started taking students from Mission High School on tours of Kaiser Permanente. He enjoyed it so much that, when he became a resident at Children's Hospital Oakland, he decided to begin Faces for the Future.

 

In the first year of the two- or three-year program, sophomores and juniors take classes about the health care system and hospital operations. Then they rotate through departments at a hospital and nearby clinics, shadow staff and assist with tasks. Finally, they visit fairs and schools to teach other teens about issues such as asthma and obesity.

 

About 100 students participate in Faces for the Future every school year, and their grades are not a factor in acceptance. As long as they express an interest in health care, the program lets them in.

 

Victor Ramos said his father was hooked on alcohol and drugs, so Magaña was a crucial mentor. "Even though I never approached him to get help, he knew when to come in and sit me down: 'Hey amigo, how you doing?' Just him saying that changed everything for me," recalled Ramos, who attended Life Academy in Oakland.

Success stories

 

Ramos, 23, has earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from UC Santa Cruz, becoming the first college graduate in his family. He works as a health educator in Richmond and wants to earn a master's in psychology.

 

Faces for the Future also helped Stacy Dao and her siblings figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. Dao volunteered at a clinic in the Fruitvale neighborhood and at Children's Hospital.

 

"Every young child goes, 'I want to be a doctor,' but this program actually allowed us to go into the field and talk to doctors, and see what the day-to-day is like," said Dao, 27, who earned her master's in public health last year. Her brother is applying to medical school, and her older sister is in the middle of a residency at Kaiser Permanente.

 

These and other success stories have led the organization to garner acclaim. In 2009, the California Wellness Foundation, which provides funding to the group, honored Magaña with a $25,000 Champions of Health Professions Diversity Award.

Plans to expand

 

This year, Magaña plans to set up versions of Faces in San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland and New Mexico.

 

Soon, there may be many more students like Roberto Perez, a senior at San Lorenzo High School who fell in love with social work at St. Rose. Before Faces for the Future, he was planning to attend a community college. Now, he thinks he has a shot at his dream school, California State University Long Beach.

 

"Faces introduced me to social work," he said. "Thanks to that, I have a career to pursue."