SJVC PA Program Awarded for Diversity
The San Joaquin Valley College PA program in Visalia, Calif., recently received the Physician Assistant Education Association's Excellence Through Diversity Award. According to the press release, the program was honored for “implementing specific strategies and activities designed to foster the diversity of PA program faculty, staff, and student body and for demonstrating an average of 90 percent underrepresented minority retention over the last five years.”
Here are some more details from the press release:
San Joaquin’s faculty, staff, and student body include high percentages of minorities. Of the program’s nine core faculty, seven are minorities, and the program’s percentage of students that is non-white increased from 50 percent in 2003 to 63 percent in 2007, peaking at 75 percent in 2006. San Joaquin’s applicant pool mirrors that of California’s Central Valley, where the program is located, and students and graduates come from a wide variety of immigrant backgrounds, including African, Mexican, Russian, Ukrainian, Iranian, Chinese, Hmong, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, East Indian, Pakistani, and Filipino.
In its efforts to develop educational experiences for both faculty and students, the program’s curriculum includes 72 contact hours of coursework approved by the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) as Shortage Area Medical Education Training, with 36 of these hours in medical Spanish. The program maintains a significant number of clinical training experiences in medically underserved areas of need; and nearly 60 percent of the program’s total clinical hours are spent in OSHPD-specified underserved locations.
In addition, 60% of the SJVC faculty have provided care to medically underserved populations, and several have received National Health Service Corps (NHSC) or Indian Health Service scholarships or participate in the NHSC Ambassador program as recruiters and mentors for future NHSC scholars.
Link to ADVANCE’s Program Notes feature on the SJVC PA program