Helix Medical Summer Program 2023

                   The Helix Summer Medical Program 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-week summer medical program that allows participants to gain a medical foundation through our core curriculum and clinical site visits to explore health in a hospital, pre-hospital, and clinical setting.

                  Helix facilitates a critically engaging curriculum that can be broken down into three components: Core Curriculum, Clinical Shadowing, and Site Visits, all of which culminates in our annual symposium.  As a Berkeley student-run program, the staff is composed of motivated undergraduates with a heart for expanding a passion for medicine in the local community, hoping to maintain the ultimate goal of encouraging marginalized high school students to pursue healthcare careers. 

               Long after the program, our alumni continue to reflect on the impact of the Helix program in a manner that highlights these values. We recently collected feedback from our past cohorts and 93% indicated feeling supported by Helix beyond the program. One student shared, “I think a big part of my reasoning to apply to future internships and programs was because of the confidence I gained through Helix!” Beyond the Helix experience, students carry our mission in a way that ripples through every community as they work to deeply understand their social and cultural backgrounds in conjunction with their health, as another student shared.

               Feel free to contact us at info@thehelixgroup.org, or my personal email at paulamarquez@berkeley.edu (I am an alumni of the Helix program myself!). Please also visit our site thehelixgroup.org if you want more information about our previous programs, or on our instagram at @helix_medical  to see what our team and programming look like throughout the year!