Mobilizing Physician Assistants: Educational and Professional Outreach to Underserved Urban Communities

There remains a dramatic underrepresentation of disadvantaged students entering physician assistant (PA) programs. To remediate this issue, healthcare professional schools have developed outreach programs to increase interest and enrollment of underrepresented minority (URM) students. There is limited research on the effectiveness of such programs in the PA education setting. We designed a program intended to stimulate URM high school students' interest in the PA profession and measure their knowledge and interest in applying to a PA program. In this pilot study, using a mixed-methods approach, we found the program increased knowledge about PA profession and education and interest in applying to PA school. However, quantitative results were not statistically significant. Findings suggest further research is needed to determine impact of outreach programs on PA schools.