When Carletta Hauck, Executive Director of the South Dakota Academy of Family Physicians, was contacted by Susan Anderson, MD, Department Chair of Family Medicine at the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine, she was asked if she would like to join the board of the newly formed HOSA (Health Occupations Student Association) chapter in South Dakota.
In over a decade since then, the chapter has experienced amazing growth.
Hauck attributes the success of HOSA in South Dakota to many individuals, including Dr. Anderson and Brock Rops, the SD State Advisor for HOSA. These individuals, along with Ashley Bentley with the AAFP, all saw a need for a stronger family medicine presence within the HOSA community, and they were able to collaborate and ignite interest in family medicine within the national HOSA organization.
Susan Anderson, MD, is a part of the AAFP 25 by 2030 Student Choice Collaborative. “The AAFP has a goal to increase the percentage of U.S. medical students choosing family medicine from 12% to 25% by 2030, and we knew the awareness for the specialty had to start in high school,” Hauck said.
Bentley formed a small task force to work with the national HOSA board to create a Family Medicine Competitive Event for high school students. Hauck, Anderson, Rops, and Missouri Chapter Executive Kathy Pabst, MBA, CAE, were a part of that task force. They also attended the National HOSA Conference in Tennessee, where they, along with Kathy McCarthy, Chief Operating Officer at the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, helped judge the first-ever Family Medicine Competitive Event.
During the past two SD State HOSA Conferences, Hauck has led a breakout session to teach the students about the specialty of Family Medicine. She felt the students, like a lot of the public, did not understand much about the specialty. She created a jeopardy game and explained the differences between family medicine and other medical specialties.
In 11 years, the SD State HOSA Conference has grown to over 900 high school participants. Hauck applied for a grant through the Family Medicine Philanthropic Consortium (FMPC) so their state chapter could award cash prizes for an essay contest open to senior HOSA students. The essay's content goals were to broaden their exposure to family medicine and get them thinking about a future as a family physician.
This funding isn’t just for the South Dakota chapter, though, it’s on the table for every chapter.
“The FMPC offers us this funding, and if we just leave it sitting on the table and don’t take advantage of it, we’re not only doing a disservice to our chapter but to the students in the HOSA program,” said Hauck.
Applying for a grant is simple. Your chapter can fill out this form for a $750 grant, and then you can look up your local HOSA group and tell them you’d like to put money into the program to engage students and pique interest in family medicine.