The Helix Summer Medical Program was built on the premise of breaking educational barriers for marginalized and socioeconomically disadvantaged high school students in order to diversify the healthcare workforce. This goal culminates into a free 4 summer medical program that allows participants 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. 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. Our budget is currently set at $15,000 to accommodate the needs of our students throughout the program. We house the students on-campus in the dormitories for the first week of the program, where they can easily access resources and spaces to participate in the core curriculum, which focuses on aspects of medicine, public health, and the social determinants of health. We also envision a future where, with the necessary funding, our students will be able to actively improve the systems in their communities by designing an intervention for the inequities that they research through their projects. Your donation would make a significant difference in the quality of experience that we are able to provide for our students.

As portrayed in the images below, your donation will be funding: 

• Housing: Dorm Contract & Dining Plan Expenses ($11,000)

• Curriculum Materials: Dissection and Suture Kits + More ($1,250)

• Student CPR Certification ($800)

• Meals, Snacks, and Other Expenses ($1,500)

• Transportation: Students (Shadowing and Site Visits) & Staff (High School Application Outreach)  ($1,000)

This summer program makes space for youth to shadow a variety of professions, creating opportunities for exposure to the practice of medicine while developing a career-long network of mentors. As a Berkeley student-run program, the volunteer staff is composed of motivated undergraduates with a heart for expanding a passion for medicine and public health 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 our 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. All in all, Helix impacts more than just students’ and parents’ lives; we strive to impact communities through the skills that we instill in our students for the enrichment of their future careers. 

Schools our alumni are attending:

- UC Berkeley (10+ alumni)

- Stanford 

- UCLA

- UC San Diego

- UC Davis

- USC

- Brown University

- American University

- University of the Pacific

- Fresno State University

- Sacramento State University 

- San Jose State University 

Feel free to contact us at helixsummerprogram@gmail.com, or personally at paulamarquez@berkeley.edu (I was also a student in the program in 2019!). 

Please visit our site thehelixgroup.org if you want more information about our previous programs! 

Darleene, Daniel, and Paula, pictured standing at both ends, are alumni of the program who have returned as staff! 

70% of surveyed alumni reported keeping in contact with former cohort members and staff beyond the program. 

2018 Student Cohort 

2019 Program Staff

Watch the videos linked on this page for a heartfelt snapshot of the 2019 and 2022 

summer programs and consider helping our students through this campaign!