Once students graduate from college and enroll in medical and graduate programs, UHP is there to offer them tutoring, mentors, internships conducting research at universities and companies around the world, plus regular interactions with medical residents and health care providers. The efforts reflect UHP’s mission to increase the number of minority health practitioners and improve the quality of medical care in local communities of color.

“We try to educate and train students and make them aware of their responsibility as a minority health care provider,” says Dr. Darryl Pendleton, UHP director in the College of Dentistry. Pendleton is one of several directors/associate deans overseeing UHP activities within each of UIC’s seven health sciences colleges. Another UHP director runs the Early Outreach Program that works with students from kindergarten through their senior year of college.

Using a six-year grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, staff in the College of Dentistry worked hard to increase the number of minority faculty members over the past five years from five to 18, or 16 percent of the total faculty. And last year, minority student enrollment at the college composed 18 percent of the entering class, says Pendleton, who also serves as the college’s associate dean for student and diversity affairs. He’s hoping those numbers will rise to 25 percent this year, representing historic levels for the dental school.

Tackling Health Disparities

Program officials say many students involved in UHP come from communities where there are too few medical providers on hand to serve the population. “So often they themselves may have been impacted by experiences navigating the health care system or family members navigating the health system,” says Dr. Javette C. Orgain, UHP assistant dean in the College of Medicine.

The program does not require participating students to attend the university after high school. Officials also don’t mandate that medical and professional school graduates work in underserved minority communities. But many do the latter because they want to help alleviate the suffering caused by diseases that disproportionately afflict people of color.