UC Davis Medical Center to help develop School of Health at new Sacramento High School

St. HOPE Public Schools has formed a partnership with UC Davis Medical Center to develop the School of Health at the newly reformulated Sacramento High School.

“This is an unprecedented partnership,” said Kevin Johnson, president and CEO of St. HOPE Corporation. “As the lead sponsor for the School of Health, the medical center will play a key role in the school’s design. The medical center will advise us on the development of our curriculum, provide students with ‘real-world’ experiences, supply physicians, nurses and others to serve as mentors, and provide professional development opportunities for our faculty.”

Johnson added, “The medical center deserves credit for contributing not only to better health care, but to the improvement of our youth and the community as a whole.”

The School of Health is one of six small liberal arts schools that will form the new Sacramento High School. St. HOPE Public Schools was awarded use of the facility as a charter school by the Sacramento City Unified School District. The other schools will be devoted to arts; business; journalism; math, engineering and science; and public service.

By serving as lead sponsor of the School of Health, the medical center will benefit by helping to produce a “home-grown” supply of well-educated, trained students with an interest in health-care careers, said Robert Chason, chief executive officer of UC Davis Medical Center.

“This partnership has tremendous potential for helping us address some of our most urgent needs over the long term,” Chason said. “The medical center — and the health-care industry in general — is confronting shortages of highly skilled workers such as nurses, medical technicians and pharmacists. Because the educational requirements for these professions are so demanding, high school is the place where we must start preparing students for college and careers.

“In addition to needing sheer numbers, we also want our work force to reflect the social and ethnic diversity of the community we serve. There’s no better place to start than our own neighborhood.”

The partnership will benefit the medical center in other ways. For example, many of its grant-funded programs require it to reach out to high-school students to interest them in science and medicine. One such program is the Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology, which is receiving $40 million from the National Science Foundation over 10 years. One goal of that grant is to develop outreach programs for high school students.
As lead sponsor for the Sacramento High School of Health, the medical center will contribute $500,000 over five years.

Margaret Fortune, superintendent of St. HOPE Public Schools, said, “We are very grateful and appreciative that the medical center, through its sponsorship, is displaying the vision that acknowledges the value of structuring a curriculum that is intellectually challenging and linked to students’ lives and interests. Research shows that students are more likely to be active participants in the learning process when the coursework is structured around their particular interests. They attend school more often, are more engaged, have fewer discipline problems and have better achievement.”

Students in the School of Health will follow a course of study designed to meet University of California and California State University A-G requirements. Integrated into the core courses will be topics, assignments and thematic units related to health care. Students also will be able to choose electives designed to provide a more in-depth look at health-related topics.