Helix @ Berkeley

Jeff poses for the camera as he introduces the Helix Symposium

Helix was built on the premise of breaking educational barriers for marginalized and socioeconomically disadvantaged high school students to diversify the healthcare workforce. This goal culminates into a free 4 summer medical program that allows matriculants to gain a medical foundation through our core curriculum and clinical site visits that allow students explore health in a hospital, pre-hospital, and clinical setting. To build off our summer program from the past summer, which featured a 2 week didactic portion followed by a year long opportunity to shadow an assigned mentor-physician at Kaiser Permanente, we are enacting a more comprehensive curriculum and allowing our cohort to shadow a broader, more specialized set of medical professions. Consequently, through crowdfunding, Helix intends for any financial contributions it receives to build a foundation for talented high school students lacking such educational resources  to become the next generation of promising clinicians.

Students Savannah Wong and Emmeline De Asis presenting their research project at the Kaiser Oakland Medical Center

Our curriculum budget totals to $3400, consisting of the actual laboratory material during the 1 week core curriculum and transportation costs for students to get to their assigned hospital sites during the 3 week site visits. The curriculum portion begins with three health modules that broaden the scope of a health problem from a microscopic pathology standpoint to a socioeconomic and political standpoint. Combined, these activities cost $385, including materials such as blood pressure kits, sheep hearts, pig feet, and hand soap. Miscellaneous labs, which include medical imaging, emergency medical skills, and mouse dissections, complement the health modules with hands-on experimentation to replicate basic scientific research, totaling to $1940 for supplies. The last component of the didactic portion includes the Helix symposium held at the School of Public Health, where students present their research on a public health issue to our program’s network of clinicians and mentors, totaling to $575 for room reservations and poster board costs. Finally, transportations ensures that all 20 of our matriculants receive 5 bart tickets to arrive at their designated hospital, pre-hospital, and clinical sites, which primarily reside between downtown Kaiser Permanente, UCSF and the Bay Area Fire Departments. Each bart ticket will be valued at $5, equating to $500 for 100 total bart tickets.

Your generous contributions support purchasing the materials for the core curriculum and the means of transportation for student shadowing opportunities. By generating money for the curriculum, Helix alleviates the burdens and stressors that come with a lack of educational opportunities. Minimizing the emphasis on lecture-heavy classes in lower division college courses and high schools, Helix presents its modules in a collaborative manner that empowers students to discuss socioeconomic and health problems they’ve observed in their community and acquire skills and knowledge to address and alleviate these societal issues through pursuing health, medical, and biological research professions. Secondly, by accumulating transportation funding, Helix will reduce the difficulty parents have of driving students to remote locations away from their work, allowing students to arrive promptly and immerse themselves in the full experience of exploring different health occupations. Work with us to promote equal representation in the healthcare workforce one gift at a time and consider donating today!

For more information about our program and mission statement, visit our website https://www.thehelixgroup.org/. Thank you for your support as without you, Helix would cease to proceed past an optimistic dream of transforming the medical workforce.

The Helix team

Are you thinking what we're thinking? Equal representation in healthcare? We thought so!