Program Introduction/Background

American Medical Pathway (AMP) Honors is a free networking app for students interested in healthcare careers. The digital platform is designed as a near-peer mentorship community in which pre-medical undergraduates and medical school students share their knowledge and experiences with high school students. In January 2025, a one-year pilot project “Wisconsin Health Career Lab: An Innovative Approach to Upstream Workforce Development” was initiated, funded by a generous grant from Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin (AHW) Endowment. Funds from the grant are used to sponsor high school HOSA chapters in underserved rural and urban communities throughout the state to join a separate channel on AMP called the Wisconsin Health Career Lab. HOSA is a global student-led organization with a mission to empower future health professionals to become leaders in the global health community, through education, collaboration, experience, and competitions. HOSA has over 260,000 members among its 54 chartered associations. The current AHW funded project connects Wisconsin HOSA high school students with near-peer mentors for career discovery and shared learning of best practices.
 

Relevance to ASPBP

As a free networking app, AMP facilitates workforce development and accessibility for students. The healthcare workforce shortage in the US is significant with critical gaps in underserved communities, in particular rural areas throughout all states. While only targeting a specific state at this time, the AHW project is demonstrating the capability of reaching and supporting health career interested students at an early stage in their development. If successful in building this type of community, the AHW project approach could be reproduced in other states by building similar partnerships and incorporating evolving engagement strategies. This project aligns with the mission of ASPBP to foster professional growth and provide needed resources for students who will be the next generation of medical providers. By presenting this work through ASPBP, STEMM educators and leaders may see opportunities to collaborate with the AMP Honors community and further support their programs and students.
 

Target Population

This resource is open to anyone with phone or internet access, and we aim to target students who do not have many shadowing or mentorship opportunities. For the current project, we have partnered with Wisconsin HOSA and Milwaukee Public Schools to provide mentorship support and a space for their students to connect.
 

Lessons Learned

AMP has faced challenges in its early stages, including the difficulty of leveraging the time of busy administrators and maintaining long-term engagement among high school students on the platform. With students, an additional hurdle involves the onboarding learning curve that comes with a new app, particularly when it comes to sharing new content. Despite these challenges, AMP has accomplished impactful progress by partnering with multiple HOSA advisors and sponsoring their school chapters. To date, the AMP Honors community has approximately 1,900 students and educators connecting with real-world career discovery content and establishing connections with peer and near-peer mentors. AMP is highly transferable and can serve as a high school classroom supplement and be paired with healthcare enrichment programs such as HOSA.