When he first arrived at the Anschutz University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in 2003, Dominic Martinez heard a discouraging message from some students he met.
“I kept on hearing this common theme from students, that they felt they can’t do it, that there’s no way they’ll ever become a doctor,” Martinez said. He said that the students who needed the most support were almost universally from underrepresented populations—students from ethnic minority, low-income, first-generation to college, and rural backgrounds.
“I thought that we had to do something about that,” Martinez said. Within a few years, he had.
The CU Anschutz campus started up the Undergraduate Pre-Health Program (UPP) in 2006, which grants fellowships to undergraduates interested in going into the medical field. Martinez has been with the program since its inception and is now senior director of the office of inclusion outreach on campus.
“I thought about how some programs work with regards to legacy students where either their parents or grandparents have gone through the program. A lot of (knowledge) is passed through connections and networking,” Martinez said. “So we wanted to create a program that provided that service on top of also giving them some type of work experience.”
Fellows are introduced to the array of medical tracks offered on the Anschutz campus in their undergraduate years, which helps them plan out their future careers. Each summer, 20 students are given the opportunity to intern with Kaiser Permanente.
In 2007, Kaiser Permanente partnered with CU Anschutz, agreeing to help fund the UPP’s operational budget and provide internships each summer.
