Pacific High Schools STEP-UP to One Health

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PROJECT SUMMARY The John A. Burns School of Medicine of the University of Hawaii proposes to continue to develop the Pacific STEP-UP Program to provide research training and mentoring to underrepresented and disadvantaged high school students in the State of Hawaii, and the six US and US affiliated territories in the Pacific (Region E). For the past 5 years, Pacific STEP-UP has enrolled 104 students in the NIDDK STEP-UP summer program, and exposed other students to laboratory sciences during the school year. We continued to build capacity for laboratory research in the Pacific colleges where there was none before us. We tracked 375 STEP-UP alumni from as early as 2005 to find that a majority pursued college education with a science emphasis, and many also sought post-graduate training and terminal degrees. Pacific STEP-UP remains the only formalized hands- on research training program for high schools in the US Pacific, amid the urgent need to build and foster a pipeline of underrepresented individuals seeking health research careers in order to combat health disparity in this region of the world. With confidence that Pacific STEP-UP has established roots in the region, we will continue our research training and mentoring program but charting a new course under framework of One Health. The new strategy and approach in research training, mentoring, and in capacity building will further NIDDK STEP-UP’s reach into the Pacific communities by bringing awareness of the interdependency of the well beings of humans, animals, and the eco-environment; and its impact on health-related issues. The goal is to seed and shape a culture that values One Health research as the means to address pertinent health issues in these communities, and grow a cadre of “home-grown” scientists readied to research for solutions. In doing so, we will fulfill NIDDK’s STEP-UP mission to build and diversify a pipeline of future scientists interested in tackling health and disease questions related to NIDDK from multiple angles of trans-sectorial and trans- disciplinary approach under One Health. Accordingly, we propose three Specific Aims. (1). Recruit best qualified high school students (11th and 12th grade) from the seven US State and Territories in the Pacific into the STEP-UP Summer Research Program, and track the cohort’s academic progress for a minimum of 5 years. (2). Provide individualized research experience (and related education and training) that stresses One Health approach, and local community or population relevance. Provide STEP-UP alumni with follow up, and research-focused, mentoring extending for 9 months. (3). Seed and nurture interests in One Health in high school students while strengthening local colleges’ capacity to enable laboratory-, field-, and community-based research with a focus on One Health concepts, all in support of the Pacific STEP-UP program by expanding application pool and research opportunities, and strengthening the research training program.