Health Career Knowledge Outcomes Among Rural High School Students: A Multi-Year Evaluation of a Regional AHEC...

Rural and underserved communities face persistent health workforce shortages driven partly by limited early exposure to health careers and educational pathways. Area Health Education Centers (AHECs) support workforce pipeline programs, but multi-year outcome data remain limited. This study evaluated short-term educational outcomes associated with participation in a regional Michigan AHEC Health Careers Pipeline Program (HCPP), a nine-session curriculum for high school students.

Multi-year cross-sectional pre/post evaluation using independent (unpaired) samples among students aged 14-16 at two Mid Central Michigan AHEC sites (Mount Pleasant, Saginaw). Surveys assessed four single-item outcomes on a 1-5 Likert scale: understanding of health careers, knowledge of educational qualifications, awareness of school-based resources, and confidence reaching out to health professionals. Because individual identifiers were not collected, pre- and post-program responses could not be linked. Unpaired comparisons used Mann-Whitney U tests with Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) adjustment.

Between 2020 and 2025, 347 students participated in the HCPP, with the primary analysis drawing on five cohorts (Mount Pleasant 2023-2025; Saginaw 2024-2025). Understanding of health careers and knowledge of educational qualifications reached significance in every cohort, while awareness of school-based resources reached significance in three of five cohorts and confidence reaching out to health professionals in one of five. Effect sizes ranged from r = 0.31 to 0.64, and program satisfaction remained consistently high across sites and years (mean ratings 4.6-5.0).

HCPP participation was associated with consistent end-of-program differences in health career knowledge and educational pathway awareness across multiple cohorts and two regional sites. Because responses could not be linked at the individual level, these findings reflect group-level differences rather than within-student change or causal effects. While encouraging, these short-term outcomes warrant longitudinal follow-up to determine whether early participation translates into eventual entry into the health professions workforce.