Proximal versus distal influences on underrepresented minority students pursuing health professional careers

The Health Careers Opportunities Program (HCOP) at Creighton University provides an important illustration of the short- and long-term successes of pipeline programming. The Pipeline to Success program at Creighton University provides exposure and enrichment activities to participants beginning in middle school and continuing through a one-year postbaccalaureate component in order to ensure that they are knowledgeable about health professional careers and competitive in applying for these training programs. This study hypothesized that the enrichment activities experienced by participants would have the additional benefit of providing indirect or distal influences to motivate participants to meet their career goals. In partial support of this hypothesis, a MANOVA demonstrated that the middle-school participants demonstrated a different pattern of influence from the other program components. Results indicate that as participants progressed through the Pipeline to Success HCOP at Creighton University, the program resources impacted their desire to pursue health professional careers in addition to positively preparing them for health professional training programs. We conclude that these findings have particular importance for planning and implementing student education programs.