Identifying Shared Components to Help Create High School Public Health Pipeline Programs in USA: A Scoping Review

There is a well-documented global and national shortage of diverse students advancing from high school to graduate and professional programs in public health, medicine, and related fields. Moreover, diversity remains limited among those who ultimately enter the health workforce. Underrepresented minorities (URM) represent fewer than 10% of workers in most health professions, including public health, but represent 1/3 of the population. Pipeline programs aim to close this gap by supporting URM students to choose and complete health professions degrees. This paper reviews current and past health profession pipeline programs to determine best practices to create, implement, and evaluate successful programs. Using EBSCOhost and reference list searches, we identified 26 health-related pipeline programs that met our criteria. After data charting the 26 programs, we compared key characteristics including application process, duration of program, mentoring, components to increase self-efficacy, final projects, educational style, and college preparation components. Success criteria for the evaluation of the implemented programs were reviewed. There is a lack of evidence related to the overall success of pipeline programs. Yet, qualitative and subjective evaluation suggests some common characteristics of pipeline programs geared toward URMs in public health. These include using hands-on, cooperative learning techniques, college preparation, and mentoring with opportunities for long-term follow-up. Pipeline programs should aim to increase self-efficacy of achieving careers in the public health, medicine, and other health care fields.