HCOP receives funding renewal
Dr. Lawrence Pan, professor and chair of the Department of Physical Therapy, received funding for the next three years ($650,000 per year, pending federal appropriations) for Marquette's Health Careers Opportunity Program. HCOP is a comprehensive model based on 28 years of HCOP programming, with continuous HCOP funding from 1981 through 2006, and again from 2008-11.
HCOP funding has been crucial to Marquette’s diversity effort in health professions. The goal of HCOP is to rectify health disparities in the work force and in the delivery of care to underserved segments of our population. Many studies have shown repeatedly that health care practitioner who came from a disadvantaged background are far more likely to return to serve disadvantaged segments of the population. Marquette’s HCOP has graduated 863 practitioners from disadvantaged backgrounds in dentistry, physical therapy, speech pathology, clinical laboratory science and physician assistant studies.
Major HCOP partners are health professions programs and undergraduate majors at Marquette, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools, Milwaukee AHEC and Milwaukee community-based organizations.
Disadvantaged students qualify by meeting federal poverty levels, by being a first-generation college student, or attending schools with low academic performance. All MPS and CPS student qualify for HCOP. The primary geographic focus is urban Milwaukee, which has four dental health profession shortage areas. The program’s primary target area suffers from low academic performance indicators and high concentrations of disadvantaged students. Marquette’s program provides science enrichment programming and career exploration programming through the year.
A major focus of the program is five levels of intensive summer science enrichment programs targeting three level of disadvantaged high school students and two at the college level. Students must complete 6 hours/day of structured science and health science programming for six weeks. This past summer, 92 disadvantaged students came to Marquette for our summer science programs. These outreach programs provide a vehicle for disadvantaged student to realize their dream of being a health care professional.
For more information on the program, please contact Manuel Santiago, Associate Director, Health Careers Opportunity Program (manuel.santiago@marquette.edu).
