Digital cadavers, pairing med students with teens: Health-care co-op programs are targeting high schoolers

As layers of a digitally scanned clay sir robert peel aside before their eyes, neural teenage giggles and amazement morph into curiosity and fascination — as about two dozen high schoolers lean into hands-on lab activities while visiting Toronto Metropolitan University's new School of Medicine in nearby Brampton, Ont.

Within minutes, the co-op students from Peel District School Board (PDSB) are adeptly swiping the screens of several virtual dissection tables — imagine long, table-sized computers — to rearrange the 3D models, zooming in on bones and muscles.

"You can discover where the fibula is and you can look around. You can turn the bodies," 16-year-old Yashita Singh explained in an excited rush.

"You can like go through skin … layer by layer and you can dissect them, which is really cool."

Co-op programs at health-care sites regularly enlist post-secondary students, but some are skewing younger to target high schoolers instead. The hope is to spark interest in a broader pool of teens, especially those from under-represented groups, and get more of them thinking about Canada's health-care system.

The senior years of high school are a pivotal moment when students get inspired to pursue different paths, says Gurmeet Lall, the school's director of clinical anatomy and simulation. So, when prepping for the PDSB visit, she chose interactive activities to engage them, make things relatable and hopefully get them imagine themselves back in her labs one day.

"I really wanted to have the students come in and interact with the technology," she said.

"The goal here was to kind of connect whatever they learn in the classroom — and see how we're teaching the same concepts to our medical students and what technologies we use for that."

This week's visit was part of a new PDSB-TMU co-op course called Equity in the Future of Healthcare, which has 25 seniors from five schools meeting weekly to learn about the health-care system.

They get a peek into different fields — from medicine and midwifery to public health and social work — through lectures, visits to labs and classrooms and meet-ups with TMU students. It counts both toward their high school diplomas and for TMU, if they choose to study there.

While Singh, the student, did have a prior interest in health care, the course is broadening her horizons.

"I can talk to the med school students and understand their experiences," she said. "That can help me figure out if I should go to med school or not — and honestly, I'm considering med school very much."

Haris Ahmad, who is of South Asian heritage, was among the first-year TMU medicine students Singh met.

"It can be really inspiring to see that someone who looks like you, someone who grew up similar to you — from the same culture or from a similar culture, is able to enter medicine," he said.

Ahmad's older sister, who is completing her studies in medicine, helped him navigate what he calls medicine's "hidden curriculum."

It's "what you do to enter medicine, where you can volunteer … or even how to apply or how to write the MCAT or what resources are available to you," he said.

"The most powerful thing you can do is put belief in someone that they are capable."

In Winnipeg, an Indigenous student placement program that includes high schoolers has matched participants with health-care hosts each summer for about 15 years, showcasing a variety of careers — from physicians to facilities management, finance and administration roles.

Beyond showing students these possibilities, it also aims to grow the Indigenous workforce and build a more reflective system.

Indigenous people are "very over-represented" in the health-care system, but under-represented in its workforce," said Jeremy Morin, who is Red River Métis and interim chief operating officer for Indigenous Health at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

"So we're trying to bridge that gap."

Previous successes include a student sitting in on brain surgery to another who was included in an academic paper (which inspired her own research once she hit university, Morin says).

"If I had unlimited funding in a perfect world, I would be able to get probably 30 to 50 students in every year, because there is no shortage of work," he said.

In Ottawa, the Equity in Health Systems co-op program similarly aims to create new pathways into health care for underrepresented high schoolers in response to "huge gaps of people … missing from the health system," said Dr. Jerry Maniate, who founded the program at one high school in 2022.

He wants more students to see beyond mere hospital visits, offer them valuable experiences in labs and research spaces, and "role models … to hear their stories, struggles, but also successes as they had to navigate going through those systems."

Representation goes a long way, agrees Morolayo Etti, a student from the first cohort who co-founded the program. With her interest in a particular niche — biomedical engineering — it felt even tougher to find mentors and chances at relevant experiences.

Etti says her Grade 11 placement with Equity in Health Systems taught her how to compile research and network with professionals. Though she eventually swapped biomedical to study civil engineering, those skills helped with subsequent placements, she said — a reason she gives back as an advisor to more recent co-op students.

While not everyone in health-care co-ops continue into the sector, PDSB resource teacher Mirjan Krstovic says early exposure is valuable regardless.

"We already are impacting our communities by having a greater understanding of our health-care system in Canada and its needs," he said.

Rather than an interest in health care, Peel student Aisha Adebisi admits she initially signed up for the PDSB-TMU course to learn about equity, oppression and privilege. However, the class has since helped convince the 17-year-old to pursue nursing.

Earlier, she imagined the course would impact her daily interactions generally.

Now, however, she's envisioning the lessons as "what it's going to be like for me when I'm a nurse" and treating patients "with the care that they deserve, not the care that you think they deserve."

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