HOPE promotes and fosters the development of promising Long Island high school students from the ethnically and racially diverse districts of Brentwood, Longwood and Wyandanch, and strives to support them in pursuing a college education and future careers in the health-care industry.

Since 2005, 220 students have enrolled. Of those, there have been 141 HOPE graduates, all who have been accepted into college.

HOPE program students shadow medical personnel while making rounds in the hospital.

The two-year program begins with a tour of the campus — for many it’s their first college visit — and includes a meeting with Admissions and a conversation about filling out college applications.

The junior year ends with SAT preparation. In 12th grade, students get CPR- and AED-certified. In addition to shadowing Stony Brook faculty, who volunteer for two hours on Tuesdays, they also get to visit the anatomy lab with medical students.

“The University’s approach to higher learning is the realization that the more we invest in students prior to their arrival on our campus as an undergraduate, the more solid their footing will be and more successful they’ll be as they enter the work world,” said Yvonne Spreckels, director of Stony Brook University Hospital’s Department of Community Relations, who has coordinated the program since 2005.

Read more: https://news.stonybrook.edu/sb_medicine/hospital-program-puts-health-care-professions-within-reach-for-local-students/