Tour for Diversity in Medicine & Pediatric Mentoring Circles: Bringing Pediatric Advising and Mentoring of Premedical Students to the Virtual World

Background: To strengthen the pathways for diverse applicants to health professional school, we need to rethink traditional strategies for providing outreach as current measures haven’t met the growing needs. The Tour for Diversity in Medicine (T4D) was established as a grassroots effort to mediate pipeline leakiness through a mission to educate, inspire, and cultivate future health professionals of diverse racial and ethnic background. Coronavirus, though, changed the landscape of engaging with students. In April 2020, T4D conducted new virtual sessions beginning with Instagram live interview sessions. This progressed to a virtual mentorship conference, #VirtualT4D, which engaged with >1300 viewers over four days, including high school, undergraduate, and medical students from diverse backgrounds across the globe.

To strengthen the pediatrician pipeline, T4D adapted its model to provide pediatric career-specific mentorship virtually through the Pediatric Mentoring Circles (PMC) to trainees considered underrepresented in medicine and students from backgrounds considered disadvantaged.

Methods: Student recruitment was conducted through T4D social media channels (Twitter, Instagram). This targeted premedical students from high school through post-baccalaureate level. Faculty included six pediatrician mentors from T4D, representing various training levels from residency to junior faculty with different specialty backgrounds. Monthly sessions were conducted from September-December 2020. Grant funding was obtained through the American Association of Pediatrics “Pediatric Pipeline Innovation Program” mechanism.

Results: Fifty-five students were selected and divided into groups with the six T4D faculty mentors. Students represented 16 states with >90% representing underrepresented racial/ ethnic backgrounds. Importantly, 42% of students never previously attended a pipeline program, 65% are first generation college students, 75% will be the first healthcare worker in their family, and 100% would be the first physician in their family. Five topic areas were addressed (applying to medical school, goal setting and network development, pediatrics career opportunities, pediatrics leadership, and the impact of racism on child and adolescent health) through workshops utilizing different learning modalities. Students were provided pre and post workshop learning articles and tools for further developing their professional identity formation, through goal setting, network mapping, and personal reflections.

Conclusion: T4D PMC increased exposure to pediatrics through a unique virtual model with scaffolded sessions based on the students’ education level and a supportive environment to foster professional identity formation through pediatric-focused mentorship. Additionally, PMC provided introductory knowledge and skills for students regarding the medical school/ residency application process. Students appreciated the virtual model as it gave them a national tiered network of peers and mentors. Mentors empowered students to continue their journeys to pediatrics by embracing shared experiences through stories about successes and hardships. Next steps include long-term evaluation of student outcomes and partnering with organizations such as Association of Pediatric Program Directors as the next planned cohort targets medical students from diverse backgrounds.